House of Saints: Hell Hounds (DMTN)
by Kokoro-no-Kaji
Summary: (DMTN - ER basis) Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard her. It's no simple task when it's the things that haunt nightmares that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, & more importantly, towards each other.
1. CLAIMED

**Fandom**: Dalmatian, E.R. mv & teaser-pics (Magic AU)  
**Pairings**: Simon x Inati ; Simon/FemOC/Inati ; YoungWon (Dongrim) x Fem OC  
**Rating**: PG-13 (violence x sexual themes)  
**Chp WC**: 5,220

**Summary**: Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard 's no simple task when it's the things that haunt the nightmares of children that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, and more importantly, towards each other …

**A/N:** I'm actually not sure what category this fits into (notes at the bottom), so I've stuck it here, but I hope you enjoy reading it anyway!

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{_聖の家__:_ _奈落の番犬_} (naraku no banken)

The House of Saints: Hell Hounds

~Claimed~

It was his job to lurk.

As a Watchdog of St. Aggie's, Simon's whole purpose in existing was to lurk.

Watching from the shadows, from the darkened corners of the school, Simon's job was to lurk and ensure that none of St. Aggie's _special_ students stepped out of line. He was also supposed to keep an eye on the residents, staff and students alike, of St Aggie's that didn't know they were special.

Milly was one such resident, one that Simon had taken a particular interest in.

Millicent LeBourghe didn't know her full name, and she didn't know a thing about the powers lying nearly dormant inside her, the swirl of energy that drew Simon to her like a magnet. As far as she knew, she was just a maid, a baby dropped on the doorstep of one of the world's greatest schools and taken in by the goodness of St. Aggie's Staff Council.

When Simon padded silently into the kitchen, Milly was up to her elbows in flour. She was pounding out the last batch of biscuits for the morning's breakfast, the students of St Aggie's would be up and asking for them in about an hour. Simon wasn't asking.

He took one of the biscuits that had come out of the oven in a previous batch and ripped it in half. The steam of the still-warm biscuit blew across his face as he bit into his stolen treat. Milly heard the crunch of it between his teeth and whipped her head around in surprise. "Geez, Simon!" she panted, "You almost gave me a heart-attack."

Simon smirked at her, his teeth unnaturally white and gleaming in the fuzzy golden light of early morning. "We wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

He leaned his hips back against the counter, facing Milly as she turned back to her work. With Simon less than a foot away from her, his black button up hanging open as usual, Milly found it difficult to concentrate. Simon unnerved her.

Out of the corner of her eye, Milly looked Simon over as she worked. The intricate tattooing on his chest and neck had always been fascinating and unsettling at once. It called to her in a way she didn't understand, and nauseated her at the same time. Simon could see it in her eyes as they combed over him with subtlety a normal person would have missed. He knew that it was her latent power sensing his own, attracted to the thrill of Power and revolted by the black ooze of the binding spells inlaid into his skin.

Simon knew all about her internal conflict, but he didn't say anything. He couldn't. It was part of the bindings tying him to St. Aggie's. He was little more than a guard dog, bound by a master's will to keep Milly in the dark.

However, even if he'd been able to explain it to her, Simon wouldn't have. It was too much fun to watch her struggle with it inside of her, the reactions her body was having to him drove her insane and amused Simon to no end. He was just flirty enough, just cold enough, just aggressive and shy and sweet and suggestive enough to keep her right on the edge of horrifically muddled. His favorite little game with his favorite little toy.

Milly finished up with the biscuits and slid the tray into the oven. She went to wash up, running chilly water over her skin and trying to keep herself calm as Simon came over to stand behind her. She jumped when she felt his fingers brush across the back of her neck, teasing at the strands of her short red hair that has escaped their tie.

As Milly fought to keep her heart-rate steady, she dried her hands and shivered as she felt Simon yank the tie from her hair altogether. Puffing out around her face, the bright scarlet of her hair resembled a lion's mane, fierce and dripping with regal power yet cute and fluffy at once. Simon chuckled when she turned around and moved his hand to cup the side of her face. His thumb ran over her cheekbone. "You missed a spot," he crooned, sweeping the streak of flour off of her face with a sensuousness disguised as helpfulness. She practically shivered at his touch.

"Thanks." Her voice was a carefully controlled sound, forced away from being breathy by sheer will-power.

Milly looked up into Simon's dark eyes, searching for the answer to a question she didn't know how to ask. Simon's eyes were intense, swirls of _something_ far deeper than mere emotion. Milly could lose herself completely in them. And Simon knew it. For his part, Simon hid behind his eyes. Opening his soul, or rather the black boil that barely qualified as a 'soul', to Milly was not an option for him. If he looked into her eyes, really _looked,_ she could have destroyed him. Her innocence, her kindness, her genuine concern . . . it seared the writhing black inside him; the hate, the pain, the anger, Milly's attentions made it all _burn._

"_Simon_."

The quiet moment had stretched passed its natural bounds. Milly had given into him, so close to completely that Simon was practically incensed with the interruption. Just a few more bloated seconds stolen from reality and he would have had her. Simon's teeth clicked together as his mouth snapped shut and his lips pressed together in a tight line. He knew the oh-so friendly bark that had shattered the breathless silence all too well.

Letting his hand fall, brushing along Milly's bare arm as it did, Simon looked over her shoulder to eye Daniel standing on the scullery stairs. Daniel wasn't top dog in this neck of the woods, but he was much higher up the ladder than Simon. Disobeying him wasn't an option.

As Daniel stepped further into the kitchen, Simon spotted Jeesu and Dongrim hanging back by his flank. Simon eyed the trio, holding back a snarl. They always came trotting by just in time to ruin his fun.

"Inati wants to see you," Daniel barked, his voice controlled but obviously furious.

Simon stepped back as Daniel approached Milly. He refused to bow to Daniel, to fully submit to him. But there were fights he knew he couldn't win and he wasn't suicidal. With Dongrim and Jeesu there to back Daniel up, Simon pushed down his resentment and resisted the urge to lunge for Daniel's throat the moment he looked away.

In a fluid transition of roles, Daniel turned to Milly and Dongrim shifted to keep pushing Simon backwards from her. Daniel flashed Milly his signature smile, the soothing expression of sweetness and goodwill that could make the knees of any girl on earth go weak with ease. "We have to steal him away for a little while, Milly," he cooed.

"It's okay," Milly returned, smiling back. She was fighting to get her heart-rate under control, to regain her breath. "You guys have even more work than I do!"

"You take care, now," Daniel commanded sweetly, turning to eye Simon with a decidedly less friendly demeanor. Behind him as he moved to head out, Jeesu and Dongrim pounced on Milly, giving her tight hugs and smiles like lost little puppies that had found their owner. They warmed her up, brought back the vibrancy of life in motion that Simon had somehow set on pause.

"We'll come back this afternoon," Jeesu promised.

Dongrim agreed, "It'll be fun!"

"I'll be looking forward to it," Milly insisted. She passed each of the duo one of her special biscuits. She made them every day for the guardians of St. Aggie's. Simon would have had his own if he'd ever bothered to announce himself before he started eating. She also gave Dongrim Daniel's, knowing that he would be sure to give it to second in command of St. Aggie's security squad.

The cuddly behavior of Jeesu and Dongrim had successfully distracted Milly from Daniel as he latched onto the back of Simon's shirt collar and dragged him from the kitchen with no small amount of force. Daniel kept his hand on Simon until he'd dragged him over to a secluded courtyard, one with no observing windows and the acoustics to ensure that any ensuing sounds wouldn't make their way back to Milly's kitchen.

"She's off-limits," Daniel reminded, throwing Simon back.

His body slammed into the masonry of the courtyard as Dongrim and Jeesu showed up to play. "I forgot," Simon growled, looking around. It was more of a _pen_ than a courtyard, with only one way out; a narrow passage guarded by Jeesu.

Dongrim and Daniel were the two Simon was most concerned with at the moment however, as they were the ones circling for the attack. They wouldn't kill him, their leader wouldn't allow _that_, but a maiming was certainly in store if Simon didn't keep on his toes.

"Why do you try so hard to get in trouble?" Daniel asked, a bit of the genuine sweet side he'd shown Milly seeping into his words, even as his frame remained tense and ready for a fight. He was fighting purely for the good of the pack.

"Milly's a nice girl," Dongrim snarled, his own natural sweetness twisted into protective violence as it turned to hatred and an acute grudge against Simon.

Snorting, Simon sniped, "Oh, is the big bad wolf caught up in some puppy love?"

Dongrim bristled. Simon smirked. "Too bad you can't have her," he spat nastily, flexing his claws at his sides.

In a fraction of a second Dongrim lunged at him, teeth bared, claws reaching for the soft skin of Simon's throat. Simon retaliated instantly, having known that Dongrim would be the easiest to bait into attacking. At the only entrance to the courtyard, Jeesu faltered as Simon wrestled violently with Dongrim.

Throwing him a look, Daniel rooted Jeesu to his post.

Jeesu and Dongrim might have been closer than brothers, even by pack standards, but that was no excuse for disobedience. If Dongrim couldn't take care of himself, he didn't deserve his rank.

Simon had latched onto Dongrim's long hair, tearing furiously at it to bring the warrior within range of Simon's knees to jab up into his gut. Twisting in Simon's grasp and howling with pain and fury, Dongrim slashed blindly at Simon's face. He landed a smarting blow and managed to break free.

At that moment, Daniel stepped in to send Simon careening back into the wall with a heavy thud. The two combatants stood opposite each other, panting heavily and glaring daggers across the neutral zone. Daniel smacked Simon again, harder than strictly necessary to subdue him as punishment for baiting Dongrim. As hard as Daniel was on his members, demanding that they _earn_ their rank, he was sympathetic to the affections Dongrim held for Milly.

But Inati was not to be defied.

Simon could read it in his face, this moment of internal confliction.

"So, how about it, _Beta_," Simon goaded. "You content to just let _Inati _call the shots?"

Daniel didn't react. He was used to Simon's snide remarks on his compliance. Inati was good at his job, which sometimes meant that he lacked a certain something that could be called _humanizing._ Milly was moderately terrified of him.

It didn't matter though, because as much as Daniel knew that Dongrim would take care of Milly, keep her safe and sound and happy, he also knew that Milly belonged to Inati. The Alpha had laid claim to her, and that meant without question that she could belong to no one else.

Simon laughed harshly, recognizing the malcontent resolve in Daniel's face.

"Where is our fearless leader, anyway?" With the fury of his packmates pressing down on him, suffocating him, Simon couldn't sense Inati's location.

"None of your concern," Daniel returned coolly.

Simon's smile widened, his teeth bared and threatening even as he grinned with genuine amusement. "So, _not_ with Milly, then."

None of the three reacted to Simon's statement more than the resigned twitch of Dongrim's jaw. Simon's head lolled back a bit, overcome with the hilarity of the situation. "You're all so gung-ho, here, ready to rip me to shreds for playing with Inati's chew toy, and the boss-man's off messing around with some other little plaything! Inati's good little soldiers, you three are."

Daniel grabbed Simon's shoulder and flung him at the opposite wall, rising to his provocation for the first time in a long while. He was not just a mindless servant, not merely a dominated dog following orders. Daniel followed in Inati's line because he trusted the leader. Inati had his faults, but he was the best there was at the job. Strong, fearless, loyal in his way; he was a good leader, and truly good and kind under the thick layers of steely disregard that covered his tough love.

The brief attack winded Simon, but Daniel didn't engage him like Dongrim had. He was too good for that. Simon coughed and rubbed the blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "You look bothered, Jeesu," Simon called, looking smugly over Daniel's shoulder. "Why don't you come and play?"

Jeesu hated to see his packmates at each other's throats like this.

Dongrim and Daniel were testy with each other this week, despite being old friends that respected each other's rank and power. Dongrim was Daniel's direct subordinate, after all. More than rubbing shoulders with Daniel, Dongrim had even raised his hackles at Jeesu more than once, not least because of the wedge that was Milly which Simon was using to push them all apart. Jeesu had his orders though, and he would not disobey.

He would snarl though. Jeesu would voice his distaste for Simon's actions, for his own limited position, and for Inati's absence until the world came crashing down.

Daniel's look didn't silence him, but it subdued him to a quieter discontent. Dongrim glared sideways at his superior, throwing in his lot with Jeesu. Daniel bristled.

"_Enough._"

Inati's booming voice, sounding from behind Jeesu, spooked all four of the members inside the courtyard. Silver haired and steely eyed, Inati stepped onto the scene with a terrifying calm, towering over his squadron's squabbling members.

Dealing out a sharp blow to the back of Jeesu's head, Inati made him whine in a brief moment of fear and agony. He skittered across the courtyard in complete submission, taking up a post beside Dongrim as Inati stared his pack down.

"That is enough," Inati said, his voice quiet and filled with an Alpha's full power and fury. He stared each of them down, making each member of his unruly pack flinch.

"Jeesu. Dongrim. Perimeter," he commanded.

The two in question dipped their heads. Jeesu slunk by the leader untouched, but when Dongrim passed, Inati lashed out at him. Two sharp blows, extremely painful but not even slightly disabling, met Dongrim under Inati's castigation. After a moment of panic-fueled short-stride scampering, Dongrim was able to lope easily beside Jeesu to carry out their patrol mission.

"Daniel."

"Sir."

"Search Milly's wing for black magic; there've been intrusion reports," Inati commanded. As Daniel dipped his head and moved to slip by the leader, Inati grabbed his arm tightly. "Stay out of sight."

"Of course."

There was a moment when Inati squeezed Daniel's arm hard enough to make a normal person wince. Daniel stood his ground. He may have had disagreements with Inati, but he was not disloyal and he would not be guilt-tripped. "Good boy."

Daniel was off and running immediately, needing to blow off steam before he went into stealth mode for his mission. Inati could really do with some lessons in healthy interpersonal relationships. If it wasn't for his unquestionable power and his deep down well-meaning, Daniel himself would have ripped the leader's face off.

Back in the courtyard, Inati and Simon were staring each other down.

Inati made his move in a burst of violent movement as Simon choked on the blood Daniel's pounding had made well up in his mouth. In a flash, Inati had Simon pined up against a wall by painfully firm hands pressing back on his biceps with his heels lifting slightly off the ground. Simon laughed, more of a cough than not, and spat blood over Inati's shoulder as the leader put his teeth right by Simon's ear.

"She's mine."

"You just _love_ saying that, don't you?"

Inati nosed at Simon's throat, reminding him that life and death here could be decided with less than eleven pounds of bite-force. Simon laughed, rolling his head back to give Inati all the access he could ask for. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed tightly. "It just kills you, doesn't it? _She's yours, she's yours, _but she doesn't _trust_ you. She won't let you in, will she? You're the big black dog in her backyard, Inati. She'll leave you food every night, but she'll never leave the door open."

"Then tell me, Simon," Inati huffed, his teeth scraping against Simon's cheek. "If you're the family pet, how come you're so hell bent on trying to bite the hand that feeds?"

"Don't tell me you're concerned about her, Inati," Simon crooned, amused. "Who's the bitch I smell all over you? Hmm?"

Inati adjusted his hold to slam Simon into the stone wall again. Simon just laughed. "What? You can have your fun, but the rest of us aren't allowed to play around? How is that any sort of fair?"

"Not with her. _None_ of us are allowed to play with her," Inati snarled. "It's in the job description, remember?"

Simon shrugged. "Why is that again?"

His bored voice was meant to antagonize Inati in every possible way.

Inati's nails dug into the skin on Simon's arms, just hard enough to draw pinpriks of blood. "Why her?"

"Pardon?"

"Why _her_? Of all the rules you could break, of all the ways you could try to piss me off, why _her_?" Inati growled.

Laughing again, Simon whipped his legs up, wrapping them around Inati's waist and pushing off the wall with his back. In the tussle that followed as the pair fell to the ground, both sides received painful blows. Inati ended up pinning Simon below him, a fact that surprised neither of them.

"Because it _hurts_," Simon said in a pained laugh, replying to Inati's question at last. "It _hurts_ you that I can waltz in and toy with her all I like, while you have to stay at arm's length."

Letting his weight settle on Simon's chest and watching as Simon's cockiness wilted slightly as he fought to breathe, Inati rumbled above him, "Should I hurt _you_ then? Do you want me to tell you about all the little things I can do with her in the dark? Things that you're not allowed to even_ dream_ of."

"She won't let you in," Simon insisted.

"She won't be able to keep me out," Inati countered, a snarl rising in his words to imply his meaning.

As Inati's smug grin broadened and the pressure of his claws digging into Simon's skin increased, Simon howled, "You wanna bet on that?"

"She won't fight me, not like she fights you," Inati growled.

"She fights _herself_ with me," Simon spat back, bucking his hips up to unseat Inati. The pair rolled over each other again in a struggle of teeth and claws and blood-boiling fury.

Pinning Simon down again, Inati demanded, "Why? Why do you waste so much effort on doing that to her?"

"You really don't get it. It's not about her. It was _never_ about her," Simon replied. "It's always been about big bad _you_."

Inati's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"For every bit she's disturbed, _you_ start climbing walls all the sooner," Simon explained smugly. "Make her feel a little bit eerie, like someone's watching, and you suddenly get so pissy, it's a wonder that even sweet little Danny-boy doesn't tear you to pieces." Simon coughed at the end of his speech, but he managed to finish by choking out, "It's hilarious."

Inati lifted one of his hand from restraining Simon, dragging his nails along his arm just forcefully enough to cause pain without drawing blood. At Simon's collarbone, Inati pressed harder, scratching a deep red score-line along the sensitive skin. It made Simon writhe in pain beneath him, refusing to cry out.

The moment Inati lifted his hand, pressing it back to Simon's arm quickly to prevent retaliation, Simon spat at him, the bloody spray landing on his cheek. "You have no idea how much I _hate_ you."

"Why?"

Simon stared stonily up at Inati, silent for once. No longer smug or superior, the only emotion in his eyes was rage. It was like he hadn't been called up from the Pit, as if every day at St Aggie's was just another day in Hell. The energies roiling beneath the containments inked onto Simon's skin told the same story.

Inati let go of him, sliding off his body in a heavy, weary motion. Simon didn't move. Both spent the next few moments panting and struggling within themselves. Maybe it was that Simon had been the last created, maybe it was that his rank left him the closest to destruction, but he was clearly standing on the surface with a part of him left in Hell. Maybe it was Inati's fault, maybe it was St. Aggie's, it might have even been Milly's, but regardless, the pseudo-life Simon had been given was not one he wanted to keep.

When Inati stood up at last, Simon told him, "You should just kill me now."

"No."

"I'll push you to it eventually."

"I won't kill you, Simon."

"_Everything you do_ kills me."

Inati ignored him and turned to leave.

"Have fun with Milly," Simon spat just before Inati turned the corner.

Simon had guessed correctly, Inati's destination was the laundry room where he knew Milly would be holed up at this time of day. She was knee deep in sudsy water when he arrived, looking like an abused puppy in the doorway.

Milly noticed him immediately. "Inati? What happened? Are you hurt?"

Grabbing one of the rags she'd finished rinsing, she stepped immediately over to him, wiping gingerly at the blood on his face and the scrapes on his arms. Inati shivered under her touch, it wasn't the chill of the damp cloth but the tingle of her power.

"How did this happen?" Milly wondered softly, having gotten past the initial burst of questions. She was now crooning to him like he was a wounded animal, dangerous but something she couldn't let to die.

"It's nothing," Inati managed. "Fights happen in this line of work."

"Shouldn't you go to the infirmary?" Milly could see that most of his wounds were superficial, but this was the first time she had ever seen him so battered.

"The attack was aimed at this side of the school, I wanted to make sure you were okay," Inati responded, his curtness softened as much as he could will it to.

"Really?" Milly was taken aback. Inati had never seemed the sort of person to worry about others, aside from his squad-mates. He had his job and he did it, but not out of concern for the people he ended up protecting. Or so Milly had thought.

Satisfied for the moment that Inati wasn't going to bleed to death, she scurried over to the basket she'd packed for lunch and pulled out the honey-baked biscuit she'd tucked inside. Shyly coming back to Inati, she proffered it up to him. "Thank you."

"It's my job."

"No, thanks for being concerned about me."

Inati awkwardly took the biscuit, marveling at it and wondering if he ought to eat it right away. It smelled amazing. Daniel had always brought him one of the things that Milly made, knowing that Inati would never ask her himself for one, but this biscuit was fresh, only a few hours out of the oven. Taking a cautious bite, Inati practically melted in the sudden burst of bliss. At least, Inati thought it was bliss; having never experienced the sensation, he couldn't be sure of his accuracy in naming it.

It was a short lived experience as a shadow caught his eye.

Simon was standing outside the window, hidden from the eyes of any human. He was fuming at Inati's place with Milly. It was so distracting that Inati almost missed Milly's question of, "Is everyone else okay?"

"Yeah. Everyone's fine. Simon was a little beat-up, but he'll recover in a few hours," Inati responded, looking over Milly's shoulder directly into Simon's eyes.

"Oh." Milly's demeanor instantly took up the conflicted vibe Simon always provoked.

Inati noticed. "If you need to get back to work, I can go." _Go kick a bad dog._

"No." Milly said quickly. "It's fine. You shouldn't be walking around anyway. It's just . . . I'm sort of worried about Simon, he doesn't seem very happy here.

"I can try talking to him about it later," Inati promised coolly, intending to do nothing of the sort.

Outside, Simon bristled. He glared at Inati and vanished into the shadows. Inati calmed down quickly once he sensed that Simon had truly moved off.

"Thanks," Milly responded, calming down as well with Simon's absence. "Why don't you make yourself comfortable? I like having people around to talk with while I work."

Inati hesitated. He had a job to do; things to take care of, places to go. But he thought about what Simon had said, about how Milly wouldn't let him in. Simon was wrong. Milly left the door open every night, _he_ was the one who never stepped through it.

He would deal with Simon later, with all the problems that Simon represented.

For now, Inati would tackle his own problem. He had claimed Milly as his own, untouchable to the rest of the pack. But as of right now, Milly still didn't belong to him in any solidified way. He could fix that, and would with time.

"Sure, I'll stick around for a little while."

The Alpha ended up staying for hours. Evening was beginning to settle in as he was called away. Inati and Milly didn't talk much; Milly actually forgot he was there a few times. He sat in an out-of-the-way nook as she worked, listening as she hummed and went about her duties. Everything was as it should be: peaceful, calm, and she was happy and content.

When Milly spotted Inati, she smiled at him sweetly and he knew she had forgotten he was there. He forced himself to return the smile. His unease with it wasn't that he was hurt by her forgetfulness, but unease with the fact that she had smiled at him at all.

Inati was an existence that she was not meant to be close to, not meant to even acknowledge. Her warmth towards him was startling.

As evening approached and shadows lengthened, Inati made to slip away. Milly noticed his movement. He made a quick excuse and slipped out the door, vanishing into the ether of the night the moment he was out of Milly's sight.

She sighed as if she sensed just how completely he had left her.

Daniel was watching her through the window from the blackness across the courtyard. He didn't know what to do. Milly was perturbed, that much was obvious. She'd never spent so much time with Inati before and yet she didn't know him any better for it now. She wanted to embrace his presence, like she had with his subordinates, but something stopped her. Daniel wanted to help her somehow, but he didn't know what she needed let alone if he could give it to her.

"Hey, Milly," he said, materializing just outside the doorway.

"Daniel!"

Smiling sweetly, he asked, "Did I startle you?"

"Well, at least you did it from the door," she replied with a laugh. "It was almost a knock, which is more than I can say for most of you."

"Inati's trying to pound some manners into them," Daniel joked, concealing easily how accurate his word choice was for the situation.

Milly smiled. "He was here this afternoon, you know," Milly told him, folding up the last of the cleaning rags.

"I had no idea," Daniel lied smoothly. "He must have a soft spot for you."

As Milly looked out the window, wondering, Daniel came to stand beside her. She relaxed into his presence, leaning against his shoulder without a thought. Milly trusted Daniel completely.

"Is everything alright, Milly?"

She was barely breathing.

"Hm? Oh, yeah," she replied.

Across the courtyard, Simon was leaned nonchalantly up against the wall, fully visible in the fading light. Daniel was too well trained to bristle in Milly's presence.

"You know you can talk to us, right?"

Milly turned to face him, giving him a genuine and trusting smile. "I know."

Lowering his forehead to briefly touch hers, Daniel grinned. "Good. Don't forget it."

Daniel gave her a sudden hug, quick and firm. "We just want you to be safe and happy," he promised, releasing her.

"I know," Milly promised in return, feeling the warmth of his concern.

"Can I walk you back to your room?"

Milly laughed. "Don't you have a job to do?"

With a sweetly sheepish shrug, Daniel replied, "Maybe."

"The boss needs take a break now and then so I'm glad he stopped by for once, but _you_ take far too many," Milly chided, smacking lightly at his shoulder. "You hang around here so much I'm surprised Inati hasn't fired you."

Shrugging again, Daniel replied, "My contract won't expire for a good long while, so I'm pretty safe. Besides, I like hanging out with you."

"Is that because I give you food?"

"Maybe."

Milly laughed again.

"Well, I give you extra treats for doing your job so well," Milly explained. "And since I'm gonna take a walk, head over to the main fountains or something, before heading back to my room, if you wanna walk me back you're going to have to wait quite a while and I don't think that constitutes doing your job well enough for a treat in the morning."

Defeated, Daniel hung his head comically. "Fine then, kick me out into the cold, cruel world. I can struggle to survive for one more day." He coughed and huddled his shoulders together around him, making Milly howl with laughter.

Breaking his charade, Daniel laughed with her. Then he ruffled her hair. "Take care, Milly," he instructed.

"You too," she responded waving him off.

Milly stood, staring after him for a moment. Then she glanced over her shoulder out the window to where she could still see Simon's outline. Her stomach flipped inside her, tension and butterflies, wariness and wildness. She didn't understand it.

Shivering slightly, Milly shook herself.

St. Aggie's turned the fountain in the front courtyard off at midnight, so if Milly wanted to catch it while it was on, by now she had to hurry.

Milly slipped out the back door, heading deeper into the labyrinth of St Aggie's Castle to navigate the long way around to the front courtyard. She made it to the fountain easily, the spectacular show of water and masonry. Milly had never understood the symbolism of the figures in the fountain, but she loved looking at them.

She sat on the lip of the fountain and dipped her feet in the cool water.

The hair on the back of her neck began to rise.

It was his job to lurk.

As a Watchdog of St. Aggie's, Simon's whole purpose in existence was to lurk.

Watching from the shadows, hiding in the Dark, Simon's whole reason for being boiled down to watching and protecting this one girl who couldn't even remember her own name. She was fragile, so easily breakable, that it could hardly be conceived that it was _her_ power that bound the vile fangs of Simon's black energy.

Her innocence made Simon bitter.

In retaliation Simon made her uncomfortable. As more than an adequate bonus it bothered Inati to no end. It was Inati that bound Simon to his task.

It was his job to lurk.

And Simon would make sure that every day he did his job, everyone else had to live through the same Hell that he did.

~_Pas Fini~_

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_**A/N:** _I honestly don't remember the story I based the off of. It's something I read when I was like seven, so I have no clue. (It may explain why I grew up to be such a crazy college student, but hey.) Anyway, the story came about when DMTN's ER video was released and I was making my way through SPN S03. Story startin' to make sense now? I thought it might. That's why it's been so hard to figure out where to post it. I had it on LJ for a while, but as most people know, LJ's not the most social platform. I put it on Tumblr too, where it got a great response, but anything on Tumblr fades away after awhile and is next to impossible to find again. So I'm putting it up here, mostly for me, so that I can comeback and read it whenever I feel like it, particularly when I don't have access to my hard-drive.

I'm actually pretty proud of this one, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. **THANKS FOR READING!**

(It's a four part story and updates should be every few days at most, I just wanna go through it again and edit!)


	2. BOUND

**Fandom**: Dalmatian, E.R. mv & teaser-pics (Magic AU)  
**Pairings**: Simon x Inati ; Simon/FemOC/Inati ; YoungWon (Dongrim) x Fem OC  
**Rating**: PG-13 (violence x sexual themes)  
**Chp WC**: 5,220

**Summary**: Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard HER. It's no simple task when it's the things that haunt the nightmares of children that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, and more importantly, towards each other …

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{_聖の家__:_ _奈落の番犬_} (naraku no banken)

The House of Saints: Hell Hounds

~BOUND~

They were bound to her, inextricably linked on a level that defied all words.

She was their charge, the only charge that really mattered.

She didn't know it, of course, but that didn't change anything.

As the Watchdogs of St. Aggie's, Inati and his pack were charged with protecting her from any and all threats she could encounter.

It was their job to protect her, and what Millicent LeBourghe didn't know couldn't hurt her. She was immensely powerful; as much a danger to herself as to others, but her powers were bound and secure.

Her powers were bound within her as tightly as Inati was bound to her.

And Milly didn't know any of it.

He watched her sometimes; while she was sleeping, while she was working. It was partly because his job called for it. _Someone_ had to be within easy hearing of her at all times after all, and why shouldn't it be pack leader? He had claimed her as his own, and therefore no one was more entitled to being near to her than he was.

Yet, despite his right to be standing at her side, of all his pack members, he was the one least frequently spotted at the station. He was a good Dog; he did his job well, followed all of his orders, and kept his mistress safe. He never begged for handouts, never keened after her attention. Inati was a good dog, a guard dog, and he was nothing if not well behaved. Milly didn't know that, however, and what she saw in him was simply the teeth and claws and strength of the warrior, hiding the loyal and loving hound beneath.

His entire existence revolved around keeping Milly safe and happy, and the reward for all his hard work was her guarded efforts to be nice to him.

It could have been bearable, easily.

It was natural after all, that a Dog be treated as such by their master. Dogs weren't on the same level, shouldn't expect to be treated as anything more than the servants they were. A working hound was left outside at night, caged in a kennel or if lucky let to lay outside the door. Inati had been content with his place at Milly's feet.

Until the day that Simon first took to standing at her side.

Inati could tolerate the puppy-like incursions of Dongrim and Jeesu, he could accept Milly's welcoming of them into her arms. Her attentions were coddling, reactions to their inexperience and inelegance as analogous to the adorable tumbles taken by puppies that hadn't yet grown into their feet. Even Milly's acceptance of Daniel's friendly advances was nothing more than the welcoming in of a house pet, and Inati could tolerate that.

But Simon was different. He wasn't invited in, and what he demanded from Milly was far more than his station deserved. Simon took to standing at her side, to courting her with sly touches that were anything but innocent, and he hadn't left the post since.

He hadn't left the post since.

It was a usurpation of Inati's position, an indignity that he shouldn't have had to bear, and yet he was forced to watch as Simon was welcomed into Milly's private chambers while he was forced to stand guard silently outside.

Simon loved to rub it in, abusing his position with Milly to make her uncomfortable.

He would finish up his rounds with shirking quickness to appear at Milly's side unexpectedly. Today, he materialized out of the shadows while Milly was hanging the day's laundry up to dry. He didn't see Inati crouched under the arch on the far side of the courtyard, and the leader was downwind.

Inati bristled as Simon swooped in, dropping smoothly out of a second story window to sneak up on the girl as she hummed. Creeping closer from behind, Simon snatched at the tie that bound Milly's scarlet hair into reluctant submission. When it was freed from its tie, the curls spread out in a proud and elegant swish as Milly shrieked with surprise. When she spotted Simon's teasing smile, her surprise turned to laughter and she jumped at him, half in a hug of greeting, and half to retrieve her hair tie.

Simon kept the leather strap far beyond her reach and took advantage of her slight figure, wrapping his arm around her waist. He pressed Milly too him and swung her around amid the sheets she'd strung up. Her skirt twirled out around her feet, a bright swath of green in the billowing forest of white.

"Simon!" Milly shouted, delight and surprise and happy terror in her voice.

"What?" Simon asked with false innocence, setting Milly down while keeping an arm firmly around her.

She wasn't entirely comfortable with the contact; it pushed her boundaries and made her feel dizzy, but not quite enough to push him away. Especially because the expression she saw on his face at the contact was one that she never saw him with otherwise: it was almost happy.

Inati knew that Milly worried about Simon.

He knew that was something Simon exploited to keep pushing her just a bit further every time he came to her. Shifting on his toes from where he crouched in fury, Inati watched as Milly lifted a hand to Simon's face, brushing over his features in her trademark concern.

Her hand then fell to his chest, bare as usual and marked with the tattoos that trapped his powers, limited his potency. Her fingers traced the outline of the ink that wrapped around his neck, the collar that kept him tied under Inati's thumb. She was fascinated by it.

Simon would have been drawn to Milly, to serving and protecting her, regardless of his servitude to the pack leader. As a member of the pack he was ordered to guard Milly, but merely as a Dog from the Pit, her powers were an intoxicating lure that he needed to possess and connect with, even if it was just in some small way. Under her intense scrutiny, Simon would have been powerless to push her away had he wanted to try.

"Are you okay?"

Milly's question surprised him.

"Why shouldn't I be?" His hands crept lower across her back, fingers tapping at her hips in a motion meant to both distract and discomfort the little maid who didn't know.

Her breath caught in her chest.

Milly was drawn to him and Simon knew it. His pull on her was almost as forceful as hers was to him. The only difference was the black ooze of binding spells that had been worked into his skin, those repulsed her with such force that Milly could never decide if Simon's presence nauseated her or if she was simply too giddy and unsettled by him for her own good.

His power called to her, but Simon knew that her powers weren't the only thing she was attracted to. His constant open-shirt state was partly for convenience, and partly because he knew she stared. Milly thought she was subtle about it, but her wide eyes and her bright blush gave her away to Simon's keen eyes.

Simon shifted his hips against her, making her loose her train of thought entirely as he brought a hand to her neck. His fingers brushed over the pale skin of her collar bone, and for an instant he thought about how easy it would be to just snap her in half right there.

Then Milly noticed how long Simon had been holding her, how _close_ he had been holding her, and quickly spun out of his grasp. He caught her hand to keep her from running away from him entirely. "Simon, I have work to do," she said breathily as his thumb rubbed a quick circle over the underside of her wrist.

The unnervingly bright white of his predatory smile made the hair on the backs of Milly's shoulders rise. "So? Laundry can wait a few more minutes."

Milly stopped actively trying to get away, but she didn't step closer and when Simon stepped forward she mentioned, "What about you? Don't you have work to do?"

Simon shrugged noncommittally, and stepped back into Milly's bubble.

"I don't want Inati to get mad at you again," she said softly, bringing her free hand to cup the side of his face gently. "You know how he feels about you taking breaks like this."

Simon stiffened dramatically at the mention of Inati.

Simon knew _exactly_ how Inati felt about the breaks he took to visit Milly. He knew how much the leader hated it. That was one of the main reasons he did it.

In the shadows looking on, Inati felt a small burst of satisfaction. He was going to be able to rip into Simon later, for leaving his post, for upsetting Milly, for usurping Inati's rightful place. It was going to be a bloodbath, and he would be entirely justified in it.

A quiet sound behind him alerted him to Daniel's presence.

His subordinate's eyes were trained on Simon, his fists balled in barely contained anger at way Simon ignored the laws of the Pack.

Inati stood.

He gave Daniel a nod and the Beta shot forward into the light. His pace dropped to a casual stroll as he approached. He saw Milly's hand fall from Simon's face, knew that her actions were the reason Inati hadn't stepped in himself to stop the rogue's invasion. If Milly accepted Simon's advances, even Inati couldn't just attack him. Simon might have made Milly uncomfortable, but until she pushed him away the others were restricted in how they could react.

"Milly! I thought you might be here," Daniel called while he was still far enough away to make it seem casual. "Oh, Simon. I didn't expect you to be here," his words were sweet-sounding, tempered by his tone. But Simon could feel the fury and the threat that hid beneath the surface.

Daniel then turned his attention back to Milly, smiling sweetly at her. "I have a present for you," he cooed, drawing her away from Simon.

He forced himself to ignore how hard Milly had to work to free her hand from Simon's grip before she said, "You shouldn't have! If you keep stealing things from the teachers, someone's going to get you in trouble."

Daniel's congenial smile brushed her worries aside. "It's just one book, and there were more copies. It's more of those fairytales you were telling us about."

Milly smiled back at him, unable to resist his sweet charm. She jumped at him with a hug, saying, "Thank you. Even at the risk of condoning your sticky fingers, I'm glad you thought of me."

"I left it on your desk, but I wanted to tell you about it before I had to get back to work," Daniel explained. Then, without turning away from Milly as she released him from her hug, Daniel's attention shifted to Simon. "Actually, finding Simon here will really be a great help. If you don't mind me stealing him away from you, that is."

Shaking her head so that her hair flew back and forth across her face, Milly promised, "That's fine with me, I wouldn't want to keep you from your duties."

Simon slunk around behind Milly, his fingers trailing along her back in such an audacious gesture of familiarity that made Daniel and Inati alike bristle with rage. Simon reached round her and lifted the leather strap that had been tying Milly's hair back to dangle in front of her face. She yelped and caught it when Simon let it fall, pulling his hand back and letting it brush over the bare patch of skin at the base of her neck.

Then, after a quick and cool farewell, Simon sauntered away, towards the side of the courtyard that Daniel hadn't come from. Daniel reeked of Inati's scent, and Simon didn't particularly care to run into _him_ at the moment.

Daniel moved to follow him out, to corral him towards some secluded courtyard where he could keep him isolated until Inati arrived to deal out his punishment. Before he could fall into the loping gate that would allow him to keep up with Simon, Daniel felt Milly's hand on his.

He turned to her with the sweetness he always showed her still in place. It would be better to let Simon get away for now than to upset Milly any further.

"Don't let Inati be too hard on him, okay?"

"Of course not, Miss Milly!" Daniel replied. Then, poking at her forehead, he added, "You know if you keep worrying so much, you're going to get wrinkles!"

Milly's hand went to her forehead, in a bit of instinctive terror. "Meanie!"

Daniel just smiled at her. Sobering a little, he promised, "Simon knows exactly what he's getting into when he comes to see you. And Inati only punishes him when he truly steps out of line, because it's hard to punish a comrade. Don't worry too much about them, either of them."

Milly tried to look assured as she dropped Daniel's hand. "I'll try. But that'll only leave me more time to worry about you!"

"What's there to worry about with me?"

Milly crossed her arms. "First of all, your sticky fingers; this thievery habit of yours is becoming a serious problem. And then secondly, you still look too skinny to me. Are you sure you've been eating enough?"

Daniel shrugged under her adorable glare. "It's all lean muscle," he said with a wink as he patted his stomach.

Then he swooped in for a quick kiss on the cheek, before he told her, "Now, don't worry and don't work too hard, okay?"

"I'll try," Milly promised as he loped off. She stared after him, acutely aware of the fact that he was likely running straight into harm's way.

Daniel jogged in the direction that Simon had until he was out of the courtyard. Then he looped back around to come to Inati's side. It was not his place to speak, but he did so anyway, "You should go to her." Milly would accept his appearance, Daniel was sure of it.

Inati ignored him. "Find Dongrim. He was in the South Wing for this morning's rounds." The south wing over looked the courtyard where Milly was hanging laundry. The odds of him having noticed Simon's advances were high on a low estimate.

Simon nodded silently. Inati truly cared for all of his pack members. If Dongrim were allowed to confront Simon alone, one of them wouldn't come out of the fight. And no matter how furious Inati was with any of them, he could never wish them permanent harm.

When Inati shifted, dismissing him, Daniel gave him a last look and sprinted away.

Inati remained where he was, silently watching over Milly from afar as she shook off the encounter and got back to work.

Simon meanwhile, had maintained his loping pace for only so far as it took to get beyond Milly's immediate eye line. After that he'd kicked it into high gear and raced off in the direction of the Orchard. It was improbable that he would be sought in the vicinity of the post he had abandoned, and he could lose Daniel by mixing up the various scent trails he'd laid earlier in the line of patrol.

He'd only made it to the Orchard's antechamber before Dongrim catapulted out of nowhere at him, slamming into him sidelong with a snarl so vicious it wasn't hard to believe that it was a sound only an animal dredged up from the belly of Hell itself could make. Simon was blown completely off his base, and his feet scrabbled for purchase on the cobblestones as he fought to regain his balance.

Simon was cackling with laughter as he slid into the courtyard's wall with a heavy thud, watching as Dongrim panted heavily, his teeth bared and his shoulders hunched with his claws ready to slash Simon to ribbons. Under normal circumstances, Dongrim could take Simon on alone and win; but he got sloppy when he got angry and nothing made him angrier than when Simon messed around with Milly.

"So, here he is," Simon taunted, his own chest heaving from the efforts of his run and the winding Dongrim had inflicted. "Milly's little lap dog."

Dongrim snarled again, but he didn't lunge at Simon. It was as close as he could get to cognate thought while he was so riled up, much more beast than man. Simon smirked down at him, exposing his throat and daring Dongrim to go for it.

"Oh look, the lap doggie's lost his bite, next thing you know and all you'll have left of Hell is a yappie little bark that irritates the neighbors," Simon taunted, letting his head loll to one side as Dongrim began to stalk around him in a predatory circle.

Dongrim's attack was a sudden leap that was overwhelmingly ferocious. If it had contained any of the usual power Dongrim could siphon into his movements, Simon might have been forced to yield then and there. As it was, Dongrim was attacking on brute strength and nothing more.

The power bubbling beneath Simon's skin allowed him to sidestep fast enough to catch only a glancing blow as Dongrim's nails raked across his shoulder. Simon twisted around and slammed his elbow into Dongrim's back, kicking his feet up and flipping away from Dongrim's teeth as they snapped around to meet him. He managed to land his own slashing blow on Dongrim's shoulder, a far deeper wound than Dongrim had achieved.

Sliding away from Dongrim, Simon launched his counter attack before his opponent had managed to recover his feet. Simon slammed forward, barreling into Dongrim with his shoulder and knocking the warrior from his feet entirely. It was like ramming his shoulder into an unyielding slab of frozen meat, dead and heavy enough to fracture bone.

Dongrim retaliated instantly with a sharp series of kicks to Simon's abdomen, scrabbling against him to wriggle away on his back. He'd just managed to kick Simon off of him and spring unsteadily to his feet when Daniel stormed in, the seep of his power diluted only in the slightest degree by Inati's binding of black sludge. Daniel grabbed onto Dongrim's shoulder first, as he was the closer of the two, and flung him backwards so that he slammed into the antechamber's masonry. _"Stay."_

Then Daniel moved on to Simon.

Daniel was a threat that was not to be taken lightly. Under normal circumstances Simon had no hope of beating him, but while his attention was divided between himself and Dongrim . . . so long as Inati didn't show up to spoil the fun, Simon might have a chance at winning this fight. He could at least be sure of his ability to inflict a good deal of damage.

The first move was Simon's. He bolted sideways, as if to escape, before skidding sideways suddenly and leaping for Daniel's midsection. It was a foolish battle plan, but it was an unexpected one and Daniel was knocked to the ground as Simon hit him. Simon clambered on top of his superior, struggling to keep Daniel from turning the tide as he wrapped his hands around Daniel's throat and Daniel clawed at his face.

Then Daniel kicked up with his legs, bucking his entire body with enough force to slam him back into the cobblestones with a painful thud. It was just enough to unseat Simon and Daniel flipped them over. He slammed Simon's hands into the stone beyond his head. It was a secure way to hold him down and they were both left panting from the exertion. Simon knew he wouldn't be the first to recover; his Power was far more tightly bound than Daniel's was.

But they'd both forgotten about Dongrim.

The Beta's command was forceful, undeniable by any of the pack members save Inati. But it was only effective so long as it was a maintained thought in the Beta's head. The moment that Daniel forgot about Dongrim, he freed him.

Dongrim lunged at the pair, careening into Daniel to push him away and go for Simon's throat. Daniel had scrambled to his feet by the time that Dongrim had his hands around Simon's neck, his claws digging into the skin and drawing blood.

_"ENOUGH."_

Inati's command echoed through the antechamber with enough force to make Dongrim cry out in pain, and to send him skittering away from Simon. Simon coughed heavily and Daniel could have sighed with relief if he hadn't been commanded into stillness. The booming voice of their leader made all of his subordinates quake, even Jeesu, the one who'd come to tell Inati that Dongrim had made it to Simon before Daniel had.

The sheer presence with which Inati arrived pushed the entire pack into complete submission. The Alpha looked to Dongrim, who was still too incensed to do more than cower. Simon meanwhile had dragged himself to his feet and he held Inati's stare. The defiance shot him through with pain as Inati's bindings burned into his skin, boiled against his black power.

"Daniel," Inati began, his voice full of the Power his rank allowed him. "Get Dongrim to the infirmary."

Daniel moved slowly, approaching Dongrim with caution. It was unlikely that he would attack, but the scenario was not an impossible one. Daniel helped Dongrim to his feet and led him past Inati to the antechamber door before handing him off to Jeesu, instructing with a look that Inati's command to him was now Daniel's to Jeesu. Shouldering Dongrim's weight with solemn silence, Jeesu nodded and accepted the order.

By the time Daniel had turned around, Inati had Simon slammed up against the wall, his forearm pressed down firmly against the Gamma's breastbone with such force that it would have cracked were Simon any other sort of creature. Daniel hung back by the antechamber's entrance; his orders from Milly weren't very specific, but they were the highest power acting in their universe and he could not disobey.

"I will not let you continue to upset order in my pack," Inati whispered virulently.

Simon tried to laugh, but it came out more as a strained cough than anything cocky or confident. "I wouldn't kill me if I were you," Simon managed to wheeze out under Inati's pressure on his airways. "Imagine what Milly might think when the big black dog comes to see her, covered in the blood of her friend. I'm sure that'll just make her day."

The only response Inati gave was a slight increase of pressure on his arm. This time, Inati was not planning on pulling any punches. This time, he wouldn't be letting Simon walk away. Inati would not be short-handed for long, he could drag another Dog up from the Pit. He might have to borrow some of Milly's power, might have to come to her bleeding and bloody, but he could make her understand. Or he could make her forget.

"Oh, wait, I forgot, you've got other options, don't you?" Simon baited, knowing that Milly wasn't the only girl in St Aggie's that Inati desired in some way. She was the only one he hadn't possessed yet, the only one he felt intensely for, the only one that mattered, but the point stood regardless. Preprogramed into an Alpha was the drive to reproduce, it was a far stronger drive in him than in any other in his pack because of his position as its head. Inati had released the tension of that urge on other girls, ones that looked like Milly, or were kind like her, something that allowed him to replace them in his mind. Simon loved to guilt him for it, for 'loving' other girls while Milly was afraid of him.

It was a valid enough insult to distract Inati for the smallest of instants. In that instant, Simon kicked off the wall and slammed his knees into Inati's chest, knocking him back. Launching off the wall, Simon leapt for Inati's throat.

To the surprise of no one present, Inati had Simon banged up against the wall again in a matter of seconds. Simon has already too worn down to put up much of a fight against Inati. Sometimes he could land a few blows of his own, but on a day like this it was a lost cause. If he even managed to scratch the Alpha before Inati killed him, Simon would count it a miracle.

Inati had Simon pinned to the wall by a hand at his throat, pressing into it hard enough to lift Simon to his toes to maintain the ability to breathe. A shift of Inati's hand increased the pressure, leaving Simon's toes scrabbling. This was going to be slow end, a painful and drawn out affair befitting of Inati's smoldering rage. An undignified death for a black hound that didn't belong outside of Hell's hold, a lose canon that smeared the Guard's name in the dirt simply for the fun of it by upsetting the one thing they were created to please.

"Inati!"

Daniel's shout caught the Alpha just as his grip shifted again, claws digging though the congealing blood on Simon's neck to fit snugly inside the wounds that Dongrim had left. New wells of red-black ooze sprung to life under his claws.

Inati didn't turn around but he bristled in annoyance.

"I sent you to the infirmary with Dongrim."

"I have higher orders," Daniel maintained firmly. He didn't need to say what those orders were.

Simon cackled as best he could from his position. "The little princess seems to like me, Inati," he spat. "Too bad for you."

Inati threw him by the grip on his throat across the room. It was an act of pure rage. Daniel had never seen him give into his emotions with such abandon. Inati was unstable, practically wild. The bindings inked onto his skin boiled red against Inati's violence, searing him with an intensity that made the steely leader of St. Aggie's grit his teeth in pain.

Daniel stepped between his packmates, keeping his eyes on Inati more so than on Simon. At this point Simon was so battered he couldn't have done much damage even if he had attacked. Inati though, as unpredictably as he was acting these days, might actually try something. The standoff was charged with thick waves of fierce power.

While they were in the middle of fighting each other's wills, Dongrim was in the midst of fighting his own. Once Jeesu had helped him away from the area Inati's presence subdued, he'd bolted away from his friend. He wasn't steady enough to truly out run Jeesu, but out of all his packmates, Jeesu was most empathetic to what he was going through. Jeesu kept pace, but stayed back while Dongrim ran himself ragged.

Dongrim's intent was to simply run himself into the ground, to call oblivion up to meet him. But then the light trill of humming caught in his ears.

Milly.

She'd finished hanging the laundry and had moved on to cleaning the laundry room. Arriving at the door under no conscious decision to head there, Dongrim found Milly on her knees, contentedly scrubbing away at the stone basin she'd drained of water. Now that he wasn't moving, loping along in a gate that maintained itself without effort, Dongrim had to lean against the door frame to remain upright. Jeesu tried to coax him away, to pull him into the black and hide his presence in the shadows beyond the plain of reality that Milly could see. But he was too late.

The squeak of his weight against the wood had alerted Milly to his presence.

Her head whipped around in surprise, then seeing who it was she smiled. It took a moment for her to realize the shape he was in, but the moment it registered, Milly rushed to his side.

"Dongrim! What happened?"

Milly's tender ministrations were prodding gently at his bloody body, being especially careful around his shoulder. Under her coaxing, Dongrim was powerless to refuse as she helped him over to the window, where she could lay him on top of a few layers of relatively clean laundry. She nursed his ripped and bloodied shirt off to expose the full extent of his injuries.

Even under the myriad of tattoos, Milly could see the blooming bruises that spoke of intense trauma. It was the deep cuts on his shoulder than had her most concerned though. She grabbed one of the extra rags she had with her, meant for the task of scrubbing the grim out of the wash basin, but entirely clean and unused. With it, she began to tenderly see to cleaning up the wound to keep it from getting infected. She wet the rag with the clean water flowing into place of health and hygiene and wrapped it gingerly around the array of cuts.

She was eyeing the marks of blunt trauma as Dongrim pushed himself up into a halfway sitting position. "Don't move! You might have internal bleeding."

It was a command from Milly, so Dongrim couldn't disobey.

"I'll be fine, Milly," he promised. "We get hurt on the job, it's just a fact of life."

"Is everyone else okay?"

Dongrim grit his teeth. "Yeah, everyone's pretty much fine. This sort of wound doesn't take long to heal for us. We've all been hurt far worse."

Milly gingerly ran her fingers over the painful looking splotches, her fingers tracing over the distortions that the swelling made under Dongrim's taught muscles. "What's been happening lately?" It would be too much to say that she had tears in her eyes, but there was sadness dripping in her quiet voice.

"What do you mean?"

Milly's eyes were dark with concern as she continued to let her fingers trace over Dongrim's injuries. "Everyone's been getting hurt more and more often, it seems. It makes a girl wonder about what's out there, you know?" She could feel the pain he was in somehow, knew that it went deeper than his physical wounds.

Dongrim wrestled free of her creed of stillness to lift a hand to her face, assuring and protecting her, even her heart, over-rode even her commands, at least her unknowing ones. "Milly, listen to me very carefully. You will always be safe. Even if we start ripping each other's throats out, we will _always_ keep you safe."

Milly lifted one of her hands to his, the other still settled on his ribcage. "I know," she said softly. Then pulling his hand away from her face so that she could hold onto it tightly in her lap, she added in a forcibly lighter tone, "I couldn't imagine you guys fighting like that, though I suppose that living in such way, with them constantly, and on high-alert all the time . . . I guess it would be ridiculous to think that you never get into spats."

"Life with the squad definitely has its rough spots," Dongrim admitted, trying to push the image of the fight from just moments ago out of his mind. He knew that Milly would react to that state of his mind and he wanted nothing more than to avoid upsetting her. Letting her see him all beat and bloodied like this was failure enough in that regard.

"How are you doing with it? Jeesu hasn't started to bug you to death yet?" Milly asked, latching onto this trend of conversation. "You spend so much time with him; it's a wonder that I ever see either of you without the other!"

"Jeesu is a good friend," Dongrim replied, loudly enough for Jeesu to hear from his post in the shadows.

Jeesu privately thought that he must be a fairly awful friend, to let Dongrim torture himself like this. He'd tried to steer Dongrim off the path to her door this time, he'd failed at it miserably, but he had tried. Before though, Jeesu had been a willing facilitator of Dongrim's visit. Jeesu had taken an extra shift to allow Dongrim to play hookie with Milly on more than one occasion. Both Dongrim and Jeesu were acutely aware of the fact that Milly wouldn't ever be with Dongrim, not the way Dongrim wanted. She belonged to Inati, and even when Simon usurped that, Milly's focus was divided between the two of them, rather than free to fall on the ever-loyal Dongrim.

Milly was smiling down at Dongrim as Jeesu frowned in the shadows. She brushed the long auburn strands of his hair out of his eyes, wishing that she could have somehow prevented them from becoming matted with blood.

"Out of all of you, I can only imagine Inati and Simon fighting, the rest of you are so sweet," Milly mentioned, an uneasiness bubbling in her stomach that she couldn't rationalize.

Dongrim hardened instantly.

Milly noticed, but she didn't connect it to her comment. Rather, she thought it must be one of his injuries causing him pain. Leaping up in worry, Milly leaned over him, her fingers ghosting over his wounds searching for the one that was hurting so that she could try to use a pressure point to numb the area.

Grabbing hold of her hands gently and pulling them to his chest, Dongrim looked at Milly with a pained expression.

"Tell me how to help you," Milly pleaded, her eyes staring into his as she begged. "Please, let me help you."

"Hold still," Dongrim replied, reacting to her order. He was conflicted; this was wrong, it broke the rules, but it was _her_ order, and it would help him _so_ much, in so many ways.

Milly was confused, but just enough to let her do as he asked as he lifted himself up and pressed his lips to her parted ones. He could taste the sweetness of her breath as she gasped, feel the sparks of her internal powers reacting to her worry and Dongrim's wounds as her body kicked into high gear with the kiss.

Pulling away abruptly, and moving back from him with her eyes wide and her fingers lifting to her lips. "Wh-what was _that_?" she demanded, more surprised than anything, and not at all angry.

Dongrim sat up hurriedly, horrified at himself. Kissing her had been his own move, all he'd really needed was contact with her, unguarded and willing, a paper cut that she'd never notice and a drop of her life-blood to help him recharge. The kiss was too much and more, it had crossed so many lines. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"

"Your wounds!"

Milly was staring at Dongrim's chest, more specifically at the receding purple of his bruises. There was a sudden flex of skin as a fractured rib reset itself with a loud crack and Dongrim grunted at the blunt ripple of receding pain. This was something he had never expected. A drop of her blood would recharge him, spark his power into healing over-drive. A kiss though . . .

Curling back away from him in no small amount of terror, Milly squeaked, "How are you doing that?"

"It's not me," Dongrim responded, reacting to her order as best he could.

"Well it's not _me_," Milly replied, so quiet Dongrim nearly didn't hear it over the thoughts running through his mind. She was connecting the dots, unconsciously realizing that it _was_ her. "What's happening?"

Dongrim shook his head, muttering in amazement, "I've never had enough power to do something like that before..."

"What?"

"Dongrim!"

Jeesu appeared just then, sensing that things might be about to turn down hill very quickly. At this point even if he had to drag Dongrim away kicking and screaming in front of a shock and frightened Milly, Jeesu needed to get him out of there. Dongrim suddenly realized what he'd said and clamped a hand over his mouth, wishing he could take it back.

But it was already too late, Milly had made a connection.

"You have _power_? What _kind _of power?" she asked, terrified. "What exactly _are_ you?"

Dongrim looked frantically to Jeesu who was helpless to do anything. Milly's voice dropped instinctively into the tone of Command, tapping in without her notice to the wells of power stored within her. "_Tell me._"

The ripple that her command caused in the fabric of reality spread out with the speed and undiluted intensity of light, reaching the small room that contained the standoff between Daniel, Inati, and Simon in less than a second.

"Something's wrong," Daniel worried aloud. It was an unnecessary comment, the obvious nature of the situation was that something was horribly wrong.

Even Simon had lost his cockiness.

Inati bolted away from the Orchard. Daniel was a breath behind him, having looked to Simon to see if he could manage on his own and then deciding it didn't matter. Getting to Milly was the most important thing.

Daniel's arrival on the scene came just as Dongrim was compelled to respond to Milly's question with the full honesty she commanded. He did admirably to sugar coat it, but it was a rather miserable title to try and lighten, "A servant of the black queen and guard dog of the damned." It was slightly better than 'the amalgamated souls of tortured men condemned to Hell, risen from the Pit to serve and guard the offspring of Satan', but only by a very little.

Milly could sense the truth of it, instinctively recognizing that he could not lie.

Staring at Dongrim in horror, Milly couldn't process the declaration. She hadn't even noticed the arrival of the others. The silence lasted until after even Simon had managed to make it to the little room that might not exist much longer.

Milly was in a very fragile state, and she was very _very_ powerful.

If this went the wrong way, she could blast the room out of existence.

She was still staring at Dongrim. The cloth she'd wrapped around the wound on his shoulder suddenly slipped free as the congealing blood it had been stuck to dissolved into nothingness as the rapid healing finished up its disastrous miracle. His shoulder was as smoothe as it had been before Simon had scratched him.

The sight of it tipped Milly over the edge and she fainted.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, as the power she'd tapped into tried to find an outlet, she began to seize.

Inati was on her in a second, clutching her to his chest to hold her steady so that she didn't cause herself harm. "Daniel, alert the infirmary," he commanded once he had Milly's head cradled in his hand and pressed against his shoulder.

Without hesitation, Daniel fell back into the shadows, using the quickest method of transit available to him. Milly needed help and she was going to get it.

Inati held Milly firmly, but gently enough not to suffocate or crush her. He rode out her seizure as the others looked on, Dongrim kicking himself so hard internally he was surprised that it didn't inflict physical harm. This was entirely his fault.

And everyone knew it.

As Milly's seizure plateaued out, Inati was able to look away from Milly long enough to glare at Dongrim. "Rounds. Now. And you are _banned_ from entering the infirmary."

Dongrim shuddered as the command fell into place and he moved to follow his orders. "Jeesu, _watch him_," Inati commanded, leveling blame on the bystander as well.

The pair fled the unpleasant atmosphere; Dongrim trying to figure out if something that wasn't even technically alive could commit ritual suicide and Jeesu trying to assure him that it wasn't necessary.

Back in the laundry room, Inati lifted Milly into his arms.

He walked by Simon with determined steps, Milly was his first priority. But as he passed Simon he couldn't help but call out to him over his shoulder, "We are not done."

Simon just glowered after him and limped back to the kennel to lick his wounds.

**_~Pas Fini~_**

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**_A/N:_**Thank you so much for reading! (Remember, reviews are a writer's crack so if you have the time, please drop me a line!)

Part 3 will be up soon!


	3. UNLEASHED

**Fandom**: Dalmatian, E.R. mv & teaser-pics (Magic AU)  
**Pairings**: Simon x Inati ; Simon/FemOC/Inati ; YoungWon (Dongrim) x Fem OC  
**Rating**: PG-13 (violence x sexual themes)  
**Chp WC**: 8,998

**Summary**: Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard HER. It's no simple task when it's the things that haunt the nightmares of children that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, and more importantly, towards each other …

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{_聖の家__:_ _奈落の番犬_} (naraku no banken)

The House of Saints: Hell Hounds

**~Unleashed~**

Watching her had been his job since he had been gifted with the breath of life.

Watching her, watching _over_ her, was the sole purpose of his existence.

To be ordered away from her side was the worst torment Dongrim could imagine. He could tolerate it when his Alpha took her attention away from him, he'd learned to deal with the fact that the pack's Gamma had insinuated himself into her life; but being _ordered_ to stay away from her hurt in a way that nothing else possibly could.

Especially while _she_ was hurting.

In the week that Milly had been lying unconscious in her private suite in the infirmary, Dongrim had worn a hole in the grass four stories below her window from his frequent pacing. He wasn't allowed inside, but he couldn't bear to stay away.

Milly had been knocked out cold, by her own bubbling powers, and it had been his fault. Jeesu had told him that the Healers were certain that she would wake up and be completely fine. It was possible that she wouldn't even remember the event that had triggered the trauma. But that didn't change the fact that Dongrim was entirely responsible for it. The weight of the guilt nearly killed him.

In the week that Milly had been unconscious, either Inati or Daniel was stationed at her bedside. It was a 24 hour watch; she was never alone, never with Simon or Dongrim, and never aware of any of it.

Simon was lurking around somewhere.

He was banned from entering the infirmary as well, and he was just as antsy about it. Dongrim could occasionally catch his scent on the wind, but he never spotted the packmate he loathed above any other creature in existence.

Simon knew that if he got within sight of his packmates, they would tear him to shreds. Even Daniel, the young pacifist of the group, was furious enough with him to warrant limb removal. Simon was rather attached to his limbs, so regardless of how interested he was in getting in to see Milly, he wouldn't tempt Fate.

It had taken a few days for him to discover the way to climb silently over the rooftops until he could perch within a few feet of Milly's window. None of the others had discovered it, and no one who was allowed inside with Milly bothered to look away from her for the few moments it would take for them to notice Simon.

In the week that Milly was unconscious, Simon was watching.

And then she woke up.

Inati was with her at the time. It was the middle of the afternoon and he was resting with his head on the edge of her bed and his hand lying lightly over top of hers.

It had been the routine of the week and Inati had fallen into the cycle as comfortably as he could be expected to under the circumstances. With Milly unconscious, life was anything but comfortable. But then he'd felt the twitch of her fingers under his and, like he'd been physically kicked, he was instantly awake and alert to her every breath.

"Milly?"

His whisper came out so gently it surprised him.

"Hmm?"

Milly's tired and disoriented response washed over Inati in a wave of relief. It was a few more seconds of sluggishness and then Milly opened her eyes. They shot open wider once they registered Inati leaning over her; the great warrior was within inches of her face.

Carefully, so as not to startle her further, Inati moved back.

"Milly, can you tell me where you are?"

This was not Inati; one of the Healers had noticed his sudden alertness and had guessed that Milly was waking up. She came to stand on the other side of Milly's bed, deft hands checking her pulse and reactions.

"The infirmary."

"Good love, do you know which infirmary?"

"The one in St. Aggie's East Wing."

"Very good, now can you tell me his name?"

"Inati."

"And how about your own?"

"Millicent LeBourghe."

Inati nearly jumped out of his skin, but the well trained Healer, the person whose face had Milly's attention, was able to keep her surprise private.

Milly wasn't supposed to know.

"Very good, sweetie," she said brusquely with a warm smile. "You'll be all better in no time." With that she gave Inati a look and headed out to confer with her colleagues.

Milly waited a moment, staring after the Healer, before she turned to look at Inati. He was still impressively intimidating, even though his features looked drawn with exhaustion and his silver hair had dulled to grey with neglect.

Her eyes dropped to the tattoo circling his neck, the star the dipped beneath it to his chest at the V of his throat. The little black tendrils that snaked out from underneath the star, underneath his skin, looked like blood vessels pumping black ooze as if the brand had injected him with a sluice of charcoal. It was captivating.

Milly simply stared at it for far longer than would have been acceptable had she been staring at nearly any other creature. Inati was bound to her, however, in a way that nothing else was, and he would sit patiently to be stared at for as long as she wanted to study him.

Shivering for some reason she couldn't articulate, Milly looked back to Inati's face. It was still the stoic visage of the warrior, even as tired as it was, but there was something soft about it as well. It was a shadow of concern, of _caring_, that was normally hidden away under the thick skin of being the Leader.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," Inati replied, his voice as controlled as he could get it, but rough with disuse. He truly had no idea what had happened.

He felt like a failure of a guard.

Inati hadn't been able to keep Simon away from her, hadn't been able to make Dongrim keep his mouth shut, hadn't been able to help her at all when she needed it most.

He hadn't been able to wake her up.

"What do you remember?" he asked gently, terrified that he might end up sparking another fit, but desperate to know what was going on inside her head.

"I . . ." Milly began, feeling inside of her skull for an answer but finding only blackness. "I can't remember anything."

Her statement was tinged with fear.

Desperate to keep her calm, Inati replied, "The Healers said you might experience some memory loss. You experienced trauma, and they can't know how it affected you."

"Trauma?"

"You had a seizure."

"Seizure? But . . . how?"

"We don't know."

Milly knew that the key to finding out was probably inside her head, locked within whatever she couldn't remember. "I was doing laundry. Simon came to visit. And Daniel, he said he'd gotten me a book. You were there too."

Inati, now that he'd already experienced one mind shattering surprise about what Milly knew and shouldn't, was able to keep himself mostly under control at this revelation. But his face still showed some of his unease.

Milly had not been able to see him in the courtyard just over a week ago, of that Inati was sure. Milly didn't seem to care about that fact and fortunately was too focused on trying to remember to notice Inati's disturbance. "I finished with the laundry and went to clean up and then Dongrim was there . . . he was hurt. Is he okay?"

"Dongrim has healed completely from the encounter that day," Inati promised.

Satisfied, Milly went back to trying to remember. "Jeesu was there . . . and then . . . then I was here."

"Are you sure?" That's what Inati _hoped_ she remembered, but the hesitation in her voice and the way she knew things she shouldn't led him to believe otherwise.

Milly nodded with a stilted movement that made Inati positive that she wasn't telling all she knew. But he couldn't pry, it wasn't allowed. Besides, he couldn't risk triggering another fit.

"I'm just glad you're alright," Inati told her, a smile ghosting across his face as he took a moment to feel the relief surging through him at the fact that, regardless of what Milly wasn't telling him, she was awake.

For her part, Milly's memory was literally black between the time around Jeesu's arrival and waking up here. What she wasn't telling Inati was only that she'd been conscious inside that black, aware of it like it was a living thing. She could remember that there was something important about it, but even thinking it inside her head felt foolish.

"Inati?" the quiet call from the Healer didn't even make Inati turn around.

"Yes?"

The Healer came to lay a hand on his arm. "Miss Milly would probably like some time to herself," she insisted. "And a nice hot bath too, most like."

Inati didn't move. How could he possibly leave Milly alone? Wasn't that the reason this had happened to being with?

The Healer looked to Milly. "Can you tell this big bad puppy dog that he needs get something to eat? Or he's going to be the next one I put in a hospital bed!"

Milly was appalled, as the Healer had known she would be. "Inati! You haven't eaten anything? Since when? Go! Go, take care of yourself!" Milly commanded lightly, punching at Inati's shoulder through a forced easiness with him. He still unnerved her, but he needed to take care of himself.

Sighing heavily, Inati got to his feet. An order from Milly could not be defied, even by the Pack's Alpha.

As he tramped out with the Healer, the kindly woman turned back to Milly, saying, "Bath's over there, love, fresh towels and a nice clean slip, just waitin' for you."

Milly smiled her thanks.

Outside, the Healer gave Inati a look. "She remembers," the Healer whispered urgently.

"I know," Inati replied, shaking his head and looking at his feet distraught. "I don't understand it."

"Is her Wall still there?"

Inati nodded. "I can feel it in her head, the barrier that's been keeping her from recognizing us for what we are is still there."

"So, why does she remember?"

"I don't know. This shouldn't be possible."

The Healer sighed. "I can ask one of the professors," she said after a moment. It was frightening to see a Hell Hound so in the dark about his mistress. Usually, the Hounds were the ones trusted to care for Milly, they were the only ones who really understood what she was after all. "Meanwhile, you need to eat something, maybe get some sleep. You heard the girl, 'take care of yourself' she said."

"I know," Inati replied bitterly, angry at the Healer for provoking the order. Taking one last look at Milly's door, Inati turned to run for a quick meal. He planned to use the forced break to contact Daniel. His subordinate could look into resources that only the Hounds had access to, resources with information about Milly in them. If anyone could figure out what was happening to Milly, it was Daniel.

Meanwhile, inside Milly's room, the patient let her shoulders sag as she breathed heavily out. Once the door had closed behind Inati and the Healer, Milly simply sat in bed, her head throbbing in the quiet. Then she slid her feet over the side and gingerly tested her weight. She was so weak, but her knees managed to support her as she pushed off the bed.

Making her way over to the bathroom, Milly was astounded by the opulence of it. She was used to much starker conditions. The floor was tiled with marble, and the tub itself was made of smoothe porcelain. It filled with hot water within minutes as Milly opened in the appropriate valve.

Stepping in carefully, Milly relished the seeping warmth of the heated water, watching as it sloshed over the side and flowed down the drain in the center of the room. It was wonderful to feel warm and clean as she scrubbed at the dead skin that had accumulated during the week she'd been unconscious. The soap was soft to the touch and smelled warm and crisp and sweet, it felt amazing on her skin.

She wasn't sure how long she just spent soaking. It was a while though, her fingers and toes were all pruny before she even considered getting out. Then she spotted the straight line of silver that indicated a razor, a single smoothe blade like the ones she was allowed to use on special occasions to shave like the girls actually enrolled in St Aggie's.

Carefully, Milly set to work making her skin smoother than anything else in the universe. She'd just about finished when she heard something outside the bathroom door. In her moment of distraction, Milly's razor hand slipped and a thin red line appeared on her pale skin just above her knee. It hadn't hurt at all as the blade slipped through her skin.

Milly marveled at the phenomenon for a moment, enraptured by the red. When she heard a thud outside the bathroom though, she decided that she didn't have time for that silliness and quickly stepped out of the tub. She pulled the main drain and let her body drip dry for a few moments before whisking herself over with a towel and pulling the short red slip of the hospital gown over her head. The elastic waist cinched itself to her and the skirt hung halfway down her thighs. It felt odd that it was the only thing she was wearing as she prepared to face whoever had come in looking for her, but she reasoned that the amount of skin her usual clothes covered had always seemed excessive.

Opening the bathroom door, Milly expected to see that Inati had returned.

Finding that Simon had clambered through the window and was in the midst of locking the main door was entirely unexpected. "Simon?"

"Hey, Milly," he whispered, darting back across the room to close the window he'd slunk through. Then he tuned to look her over, taking in the swaths of skin she had never let them see before. The reason for her modest uniform had been an attempt of St Aggie's staff to rein in the attraction Milly's guard dogs felt towards her.

It hadn't seemed to help much, but seeing her now was enough to make Simon change his mind. What Inati wouldn't kill to see her like this…

"How are you feeling?" Simon wondered, surprised by the gentleness in his voice. He wasn't supposed to actually care about her; this had all been a game, just one big, convoluted game to piss off Inati. Hadn't it?

"Fine, I think," Milly responded.

Simon came over to her anyway, sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to the bed despite her protest at the close contact. Simon ignored her. He noticed the razor nick as he set her down on the bed. A bit of the blood had smeared over his arm as he set her down.

Without thinking, he licked it off.

It tingled on his tongue, still sparked with her power.

The cut was unbearably tempting, but wary of how kissing her had affected Dongrim, a story that everyone that knew anything about Milly on the grounds of St Aggie's knew at this point, Simon simply licked his thumb and then rubbed it over her cut, sweeping up as much of her lifeblood as he could.

"It helps the healing," Simon explained with a smoothe lie when Milly gasped. He then licked every drop of the charged blood from his skin, feeling the warmth of the sparks react with the energy trapped inside of him.

The added spark of power let him sense acutely that Inati was standing just outside the door, seething. Simon smirked. If Inati broke the door down and progressed to rip Simon's throat out, Milly would freak out. It would probably even cause a relapse.

And Inati knew all of that, so he was forced to remain outside, furious and impotent, while Simon stole away his girl. He would never risk Milly's health for sake of killing Simon. Inati might actually kill him because of this, but for the moment Simon was entirely safe.

Simon's eyes combed hungrily over Milly's skin. All his teasing before had been to make her feel half as uncomfortable as she was effortlessly making him feel now. "What do you remember?"

"Everyone keeps asking me that."

"That's because it's important," Simon chuckled, pressing himself closer to her and causing her to scoot a few inches away on the bed. His nearness was as unnerving as it usually was, amplified by the fact that she felt rather exposed in front of him at the moment with how little she was wearing.

Knowing full well that it would both make Milly uncomfortable, and make Inati furious enough to burst into flame where he stood, leering, outside the door, Simon hefted himself up on the bed, lying on his side next to Milly with only a few inches between them. Inati, using the sub-sight sense they all had of 'seeing' the power contained within people, could trace every detail of Simon's movement as clearly through the door as if it were made of glass.

"You can tell me anything," he whispered, "just let it out, everything you remember."

Milly sighed.

"I don't really remember anything," she admitted.

Resting her head back against the pillows propped up in the hospital bed, Milly sighed. "Just black. There was so much black."

"What was it like?"

Simon knew of the Hell behind his eyes at night, the shadows of the Pit that recharged his powers, regenerated his body, roiled under the black ink of the containments on his skin. But Milly was different. She was more than a resident of the Pit, she was a ruler. She didn't know it, but she had the power to leech onto every temptation the human soul could offer up, twisting them to serve her purposes. Hell wouldn't be the same torment for her that it was for him. In some ways, it was likely that Hell would be a pleasant experience for Milly.

It was hard to believe when confronted with how sweet a person Milly was.

But no matter how sweet her demeanor, she was still a daughter of Lucifer. She had the blood of the fallen angel pumping through her veins and she had every ounce of his affecting power.

"It was icy and boiling at the same time, and it was so loud . . ." Milly replied slowly, sinking into the memory. It wasn't so much terrifying as it was confusing.

As she was thinking, Simon felt the air around her begin to crackle with energy, much more sparking and vicious than what he had tasted in the residue of her blood. He began to worry that he might trigger another fit.

"Don't think about it too hard," Simon coaxed, inching away subtly. "It might come easier if you don't try."

Milly huffed, giving up. For a moment the energy around her flared in frustration, and then it settled down again as if it had never been there. Whatever had happened to her, it had shaken the walls her power had been hidden behind and it was leaking through the cracks. Just how big those cracks were, and just how fragile the rest of the wall was, were things that Simon couldn't even begin to guess.

But he knew it was a problem.

One that he couldn't risk making worse.

Inati had felt the little ripple of power and he was just itching to get Simon alone to end him once and for all. "Inati's been giving us all extra rounds," Simon said, sitting up suddenly. For the first time in his history, Simon was trying to get himself _out_ of Milly's presence.

"Oh." Milly's voice wasn't exactly disappointed, but she wasn't happy either.

Simon hesitated. "I suppose I could stay with you for a little longer," he said, letting his hand brush over her bare leg as he laid back down.

Milly didn't even shiver, she simply smiled as she pulled her leg just an inch further away. It unnerved Simon slightly, but it gave him an idea. He might be able to get Milly, _this_ Milly as unfazed and unshaken as she was, to give into him completely. Normally, it was Milly's own shyness that stopped Simon from achieving his conquest. The fact that the others could come upon them, the fact that she didn't want to show any favoritism. But here, with a locked door and a Milly that had gotten almost comfortable with being exposed, Simon might be able to make her yield to him.

And to sweeten the deal, he could do it while Inati was only _feet _away and able to see the whole scene taking place.

Settling himself into Milly's bed again, Simon let his hand fall to rest on her side and nestled his forehead against hers. "So," he said, tapping his fingers at her hip, "How do you feel?"

Milly closed her eyes and breathed out. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm tired, confused . . . lonely."

"Lonely? I'm insulted," Simon returned, sliding his hand up to the side of Milly's ribcage.

She laughed sweetly, opening her eyes to look at Simon straight on. He froze, his breath moving in shallow pants of his chest. Milly's dark eyes were staring straight through him. They were dark and heavy with concern, and more. They were alight with power.

Simon began to rethink his idea. When Dongrim had simply kissed her, and that when she had been the Milly they'd known for years, he'd nearly destroyed the fabric of reality. This version of Milly had her power bound much less tightly, and much less deeply within her. Even Simon was wary of her.

Milly didn't notice Simon's tension. "And," she added, still thinking about his question, "I think I'm hungry."

In a sudden motion, Simon pushed himself up. He held himself over Milly and leaned down quickly to kiss her. "How's that?" he asked with a smirk, "still hungry?"

Milly stared up at him, shocked beyond words for a moment as he hung over her, just inches away. "Yes," she breathed at last, looking straight up at him. There was something more in her eyes than there had been, but it wasn't lust that Simon was looking at. Moving closer, he let his teeth brush along her cheek.

"Then _stay_ hungry," he whispered. Simon slid down to kiss the base of her throat, wondering just how far he could've pushed her had he decided to try it. The first kiss had been as quick as Simon could make it and even that had sent a jolt of power running through him that had nearly unseated him. This kiss actually made Simon's skin spark where it was in contact with her. She didn't seem to feel it, but it burned Simon. "I have rounds," he whispered, siding off of her and off the bed altogether.

Whatever was going on with Milly was not something he had ever seen before and he did _not_ know how to handle it. Getting as far away from her as possible shot up on his agenda.

Milly's pout as he stepped further away from her stopped him. Simon's priority, whether he liked it or not, would always be Milly. It was coded into his very being. He had learned to make her uncomfortable for sport, but he could never actively make her sad.

To soothe her, Simon promised, "I'll come back to see you later."

With that, he slipped out of the bed and made his way out the window. Milly sighed once she was alone. She knew that Simon had locked the door, but she didn't even move to unlock it. This whole thing was just too bizarre, in the space of an instant it seemed her entire existence had been uprooted, shifted into an entirely different reality, one that didn't make any sense.

When Simon had been on top of her like that . . . _kissing _her, she hadn't reacted at all. Sure, she was used to his advances, as ridiculous and boundary-pushing as they were, but she had never just _accepted_ them. She'd always drawn a line somewhere and stood her ground at it. This time . . . she didn't even know what had happened this time.

Milly's head buzzed with static, memories she couldn't place and the blackness she couldn't forget. She felt so lonely. She knew she could call for someone, Inati at least was nearby, but she could ask for Daniel too, or for Dongrim or even Jeesu to come play with her. But somehow, it didn't feel like that would help; it didn't seem right, like it wouldn't be fair somehow. It was all very confusing to Milly.

Outside her room, Inati was antsy. He was shifting back and forth on his feet impatiently, his hand a steady fixture on the door's handle as he squirmed. He was just short of whining to be let inside, feeling like he'd been left out in the rain without anything to shelter under.

He was so perturbed by the fact that even after Simon had left, Milly had let the door remain locked that he didn't notice Daniel appearing at his side. "She really remembers?"

Inati jumped, whipping around to face him. To his credit, he didn't snarl at his most trusted packmate, but his movement was ferocious enough to draw attention from the nearby Healers and Orderlies. Inati's hackles were still raised, but he composed himself enough to answer Daniel, "It's touch and go. She's remembers things she shouldn't but not everything. From what she was telling Simon . . . but there's no way to tell exactly how much she remembers without breaking down the whole charade."

"St. Aggie's staff won't let that happen," Daniel responded, specifically avoiding the question of how and why Milly had been with Simon.

"They might not be able to stop it," Inati replied, admitting his worry to the one soul in the world that wouldn't take it as a weakness.

Daniel remained silent for a few moments, looking at Milly through the door as she curled up around her knees on the bed. "There are worse things than her chained up in this place. They might not have her power, but they do have cunning. And hate. Even if Milly _remembers_, she'll be able to recover, Inati. We all did, and we're not half so kind."

He was being very gentle with the leader. Daniel knew exactly how connected to Milly Inati was, how the more upset and confused she was, the more unpredictable he became. For years, Daniel had followed Inati's orders because there was no one better to give them. Now, with all the Hounds on edge because of Milly's unstable state, Daniel was the one orchestrating everything with subtle suggestions.

Inati would not be soothed at the moment however and after a moment of silence as he turned back to Milly's closed door, he replied to Daniel's attempts to assure him, "_We_ never forgot to begin with."

With temerity he wouldn't have dared otherwise, Daniel put his hand comfortingly in Inati's shoulder. "I'll look into every outlet I can, you know I will," Daniel promised. Then he went to find Jeesu and relieve him of the rounds that Simon and Dongrim were neglecting, hoping that they didn't kill each other while he was busy doing their jobs.

It was a close one.

Simon and Dongrim met just after Simon had left Milly's side. He was still charged with enough of her power to have been able to take Dongrim in a fight and he was certainly considering picking one. But Dongrim, as furious as he was with Simon, needed information more than he needed to rip the scoundrel's throat out. Simon was covered in Milly's scent, he had been with her.

"How did you get inside?"

Simon grit his teeth together, thinking about not telling him. But with Milly's instability affecting them all severely, Simon did something unexpected, he explained. "Milly's room is special, a private suite. It's not technically part of the infirmary."

His words were curt, cool and uncaring, but they weren't mocking, and they weren't lies. It was more helpful than Simon had ever been to Dongrim.

Acknowledging that by a cant of his head, Dongrim loped off in the opposite direction that Simon had been headed. They parted on terms better than they'd ever been on, and it was something that worried them more than comforted them.

It would have bothered Dongrim more, but he _had_ to see Milly. Immediately.

Finding Simon's access point, the roundabout route up and over rooftops to get to Milly's window, was tricky, but it was made much easier by the fact that Simon had only just traversed it. His scent was still all over the path he had taken.

He leapt over one last gap and there she was, lying in bed with a frown on her face. Seeing her this close up was enough to make Dongrim sigh in relief. He had been so far away from her for so long . . . just seeing her was a miracle to him, even with how tired she looked, how confused and uncertain. She was alive. As along as she was alive, they could make her happy eventually.

Milly sighed heavily. It drew Dongrim to the window. Hovering halfway inside, Dongrim called quietly, "How ya holdin' up, Milly?"

"Dongrim!" Milly gasped, turning abruptly to face him in surprise. Then she softened, not wanting to make it seem like her surprise meant he was unwelcome. "Aren't you going to come inside?"

Looking her over as she held her hand out in invitation, Dongrim felt himself melting. Resolve, self-respect, cognitive reasoning, all of it dissolved as he stepped through the window.

Milly kept her hand outstretched as she looked him over. "Dongrim? Is everything okay?"

"I am so sorry, Milly," he said, enveloping her in the tightest hug he could manage without harming her.

Hugging him right back, as hard as she could, Milly promised him, "It's okay."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he told her in something just short of a sob, pressing his forehead against the curve of her neck.

Milly held him close, whispering over and over, "It's okay, it's okay."

But Dongrim knew it wasn't okay. It couldn't just be okay, not after what he had done. Pushing away from her enough to look her in the eye, Dongrim asked, "Milly, what do you remember?"

Huffing, Milly pushed out of Dongrim's hold all together. She pouted and said, "That's what _everyone_ keeps asking me."

"It's important, Milly," Dongrim told her, pulling himself to her to press his forehead to hers like he could read her thoughts by contact alone. "It's so important."

Sighing again, Milly replied, "I don't remember anything." She scooted over slightly, patting the bed beside her to invite Dongrim to sit down beside her. Until then, he had been leaning over the bed. At Milly's invitation, he hardly hesitated to slip in beside her.

He decided that he ought to confess. The last thing Dongrim wanted was to cause a relapse in Milly, but he couldn't bear to sit with her under false pretenses like this, like it had never happened and like he wasn't the reason that she was in the hospital at all. However, everyday before had been a lie as well. Milly was the girl who didn't remember. The Hounds all knew far more about her than she did and, until Dongrim's slip up, they had never breathed a word of it to her. The secrecy was a crucial part of the care they provided for her.

Dongrim knew it was against the rules, but he had to say something. "I hurt you, Milly, whether you remember it or not."

"Dongrim. It's okay. _I'm_ okay, whatever you did, or more likely just _think_ you did, you can't beat yourself up for it," Milly instructed. "You look like you haven't slept in a week, Inati didn't look any better and he actually _smiled_, and Simon . . ."

"What?" Dongrim asked, carefully controlling his reaction. He could not upset Milly, not again.

"He seemed off . . . he didn't push like he normally does, he left because he was supposed to," Milly explained slowly, leaning up against Dongrim's shoulder like it was just another afternoon in the Laundry. "I don't understand him."

"You understand him better than any of us do," Dongrim told her. "He hardly even talks to us."

Milly sighed. "I don't know why he fights you so hard, why he purposefully breaks so many rules. All he wants is to be recognized, valued. And he's really good at making you all angry, I mean the way he _reads_ people . . . if he just used that talent to actually be helpful . . ."

As Dongrim gawked at her, Milly shook her head. This one statement by Milly told him more about Simon than he'd ever learned on his own. It also told him something about Milly. She knew things she shouldn't. According to what Milly knew, Simon only broke one rule, he shirked his duties. It was only the Pack Rules that Simon worked systematically to break, rules like playing with Milly, upsetting her, touching her, teasing her. There were other rules too, like using the black power inside him simply because he felt like it, using that power to take unnecessary shortcuts, or to torment the hunting hounds or livestock. Those were rules Milly couldn't possibly know about. But she seemed to.

It unnerved Dongrim slightly.

Milly had fallen silent, closing her eyes as she rested her head on her friend's shoulder. "I've missed you," she said suddenly, in a quiet, sleepy voice. It sounded like she was talking about a time that was much longer than how long she'd been asleep since the incident.

When Milly let herself fall asleep against Dongrim, the entire pack gave a sigh in relief. Milly was comfortable, and that was a comfort to the pack. It wasn't too comforting, since Milly was apparently remembering things she shouldn't and the pack's ranks were still in tatters, but it was something.

As soon as Milly was fully asleep, Dongrim slipped out of her bed. He made her as comfortable as he could and then slipped outside. He had a job to do and with Inati hovering just outside the door, Dongrim counted himself lucky for being able to slip out without being attacked. He wondered briefly if Milly had ordered him out, but that didn't seem like something she would do. Dongrim decided to put it out of his mind for the moment, focusing instead on how nice it had been to sit with her. She trusted him completely, complicitly, even when he didn't trust himself. That was something to cherish.

While Dongrim was clambering back to the ground to run his rounds, Inati was fidgeting outside Milly's door again. She still hadn't unlocked it. Inati had suffered through the torment of Simon's visit, wanting to tear through Simon's ribcage and pull out handfulls of his organs for each and every one of his touches, his _kisses_, his blatant transgressions. Milly had accepted them, and so Inati had accepted them. He'd tolerated Dongrim's visit, the one who had put her in the hospital in the first place knew far better than to risk her safety again. Milly liked the dumb dog for some reason, and since she enjoyed his presence, Inati tolerated it.

But then Dongrim had left and Milly began to toss and turn as her night mares returned and the door was still locked and Inati couldn't take it. A quick burst of his power could destroy the lock, but that would upset Milly. It took a much more careful slide of power to simply pick the lock, but with Inati's skill it didn't take long.

Milly's nightmares were disturbing her sleep, far more than usual now that they were so close to the surface. Inati knew that having a Dog next to her was the only way to soothe the fears, the only way they could promise her protection even while she was unaware of the Dog's presence. A good guard dog could never leave her like this.

Silent, Inati came to sit at her bedside as he had every day while she'd been unconscious. He held her hand lightly, just enough to let her know that a Hound was at her side. He would stay with her until she was about to wake up. He would stay for however long she felt like sleeping, and just before she woke up he would slip away and lock the door behind him. Milly would probably never know he had been there, but that was part of the point.

Inati's job was to keep Milly happy, as unobtrusively as possible.

Meanwhile, Dongrim was making his way around the perimeter; doing the rounds he was assigned. He'd been doing his job all week, but he'd been taking frequent breaks to go pace under Milly's window. He wasn't doing his job as carefully as he should have, but he was still helping guard. With Inati leaving Milly's side only to blow off steam, Simon shirking off almost completely, Daniel trying to keep them all alive and moderately sane, Jeesu was the one doing the bulk of their collective duty. And he was often too distracted with worry for his packmates and Milly to do it well.

He was being sloppy.

It had taken a few circuits for Dongrim to notice the change. He wasn't surprised that Jeesu had missed it entirely. It was such a slow and creeping thing that even if they'd been on high alert it would have taken three or four passes to catch the intrusion.

Something was coming, sneaking in after getting a taste of Milly's power. When she'd given Dongrim the command that had made him tell her the truth about what he was, the ripple hadn't been contained to St. Aggie's. It had shaken the fabric of the whole of reality, and the things that go bump in the night had noticed.

Dongrim couldn't howl an alert.

That would tip off the thing trying to sneak inside.

If it was as powerful as it seemed to be, and he compromised its stealth to such a degree that it attacked immediately, the pack wouldn't be able to fend it off. In their current state, they wouldn't have been able to fend off something with half the power of the thing that was coming.

Running his usual route with only the slightest burst of acceleration, Dongrim got halfway around the school before he veered off and bolted to the infirmary. He was still banned from entering of his own accord, but Milly's safety allowed for him to temporarily overturn that creed.

Inati almost killed him the moment he arrived at Milly's door, panting for breath. The leader latched onto his neck and slammed him against the wall with such force the nearest Orderlies screamed. They were about to try and step in, when Inati calmed himself down enough for Dongrim to get his message across.

In only a heartbeat's hesitation, Inati let him go. "With me," he commanded, loping off to find Daniel and Jeesu. He didn't want to leave Milly's side, but she would be better protected if he did, and that was the main thing.

Inati needed to confer with Daniel to send out an investigation that wouldn't provoke the incoming threat. He would have wanted to have Simon present for pack-business, but he couldn't be bothered to search for him.

Daniel and Jeesu curved their course to fall in line with Inati and Dongrim as they approached and Inati led them back to their base. Hopefully, it seemed like a routine pack-meeting to the encroaching power. It was likely, since Simon happened to have been heading towards the kennel when he'd left Dongrim, and therefore the entire pack was gathered together.

A quick and quiet discussion determined that Jeesu was too exhausted to be a good scout. Inati couldn't leave St. Aggie's boarder and he didn't trust Simon. Dongrim was the one remaining who'd had the most rest, so he was the choice to run double rounds while Daniel went to investigate.

Without hesitation, he vanished into the shadows and set off running as fast as he could away from the intrusion. He would circle carefully back around, keeping his power tamped down for stealth.

The pace of the rounds was stepped up slightly, making three full circuits occur in about the time they'd previously used to make two. It wasn't so dramatic that it would be obvious, but it would allow them to monitor the situation more precisely.

Even Simon was on board to run an extra set to give Jeesu time to rest up. Simon and the pack weren't friends, but even he knew that they'd been created for a purpose and he would fulfill that purpose, regardless of how much he hated his companions. He didn't want Jeesu to have time to rest to be comfortable; he wanted Jeesu to have enough rest to be battle-ready.

Dongrim was the first one slotted out on the perimeter runs, Inati and Simon took up various patrols within the grounds surrounding Milly's room. They needed to watch every bit of ground surrounding her, but not circle so obviously so as to point out her location exactly. They hoped the thing didn't already know where to target specifically.

The routine they fell into was mechanical, militarized. They changed who ran a double shift every twelve hours, to ensure that they would all be at their peak performance when Daniel came back with his report. That could take anywhere from two hours to two days, depending on how carefully he had to move and how difficult _it_ was to study.

By midnight, Dongrim was sent back to the kennel for his turn to rest.

He'd only spent twenty minutes or so, tossing and turning uncomfortably, before he gave up and trotted silently out to his post beneath Milly's window. Staring up in the night, he saw that she'd opened it and was leaning out in the warm breeze with her elbows propped on the sill. Instinctively, Dongrim scaled the wall to get to her, to tell her that it wasn't safe. It wasn't the clandestine route he'd taken earlier, but the shadows of the night shielded him from view.

"Milly," he whispered, calling out to her from what he hoped was far enough away to keep from startling her.

Seeing anyone on the wall of a four story building was startling to Milly however, and when Dongrim's whisper coaxed her out of her daze, Milly jumped back in surprise. "Dongrim! What are you doing?"

She reached out a hand to him, ready to pull him to what she thought was safety. Honestly, Dongrim thought it was safer to stay outside; clinging to the wall was easy, convincing Inati that he wasn't worth killing immediately would not be so easy. It was his fault that Milly was in the hospital, and his fault that whatever wanted her power was coming to knock down their door.

But he couldn't resist, having managed to live through his previous encounter and having seen that even _Simon_ had made it inside unscathed, and Dongrim took her hand and pulled himself through the window without putting any of his weight on her. Once he was inside, Milly sighed with relief.

"That was dangerous!"

"I've done worse," Dongrim replied with a shrug.

Milly just let her shoulders fall, looking at him with concern she knew he would just brush off if she voiced. "Why were you even out there?"

"Why were you?"

Looking back towards the window, Milly admitted, "I was waiting for Simon." She didn't notice as Dongrim's hands clenched into fists. "He said he was going to come back to visit me."

"He's busy."

"I thought he might be," Milly replied. Then looking Dongrim over with concern, Milly asked, "What's going on out there?"

"We don't quite know yet."

Milly hugged her arms around herself. The recent events had been scaring her, the ever-increasing frequency with which her friends were coming to see her with cuts and bruises, limps and aches. Something was happening, and it wasn't something good.

Moving carefully, Dongrim put his hands on her shoulders, ducking down to make eye contact with her even though she was staring at the floor. "It'll be okay, Milly."

"I'm worried about you," Milly returned. "All of you. Why does it have to be you? Shouldn't there be other ways to guard the school than by having just you five watch over everything?"

"We're very good at our jobs," Dongrim countered. "Nothing else in the world is a more efficient system to keep a place like this safe."

Milly didn't look assured. "I just want you all to be safe," she whispered.

Pulling her carefully into a hug, holding her as tightly as he could ever hope to, resting his chin on her hair, Dongrim whispered back, "We'll be fine. As long as you still want us, we will always be here next to you."

Milly snuggled closer to him.

"I hate it when you're hurting," she told him suddenly. Uncurling her hand from her chest, she pressed it to Dongrim's, her fingers feeling out the contours of his muscles over his heart. "I can always feel it when you are. All of you; when you're hurting, or angry . . . scared. I'm not sure how, but I can feel it."

"I'm sorry."

"I just wish I could fix it."

Dongrim followed Simon's audacious example and he lifted Milly into his arms, carrying her to the bed. "You can make us worry less by taking care of yourself."

Shuffling herself into a comfortable position, Milly countered, "You need to take care of yourself too! Especially with whatever's going on!"

"I'll be fine."

Milly wouldn't be soothed. She scooted over to the far side of the bed, recalling how easily Simon had fit on it with her. "Just for a few hours, please, just come here and rest," Milly pleaded, unknowingly giving a command he could not refuse.

Not that he would have wanted to, for sake of anything but keeping Inati off his back. Dongrim moved carefully, making sure to use only the sliver of the bed that he absolutely needed and leaving the vast majority of space to Milly. Even without her command sinking him into sleep, the exhaustion would have taken hold the moment his body gave into the softness around him.

Milly brushed the auburn strands of his long hair off of his face and spent at least the next two hours comforting away his nightmares as she fell into the routine of petting him. It made her feel better too, thinking that it somehow soothed him.

She fell asleep at some point. A little while after that, Dongrim woke up, fully rested and recovered. He moved gingerly, slipping out from under the hand she'd rested on his head. It had probably been the contact with her that had made him recover so quickly. He'd already seen the miracles her power could work. Then he slipped silently out of the bed, taking pains not to disturb her.

Daniel was in the doorway.

"When . . . ?"

His voice just as soft as Dongrim's, Daniel responded, "I got back about an hour ago, Inati sent me to find you. I've been here for the last twenty minutes."

Guiltily looking towards Milly, Dongrim sighed.

"I won't tell Inati."

The look of relief and gratitude in Dongrim's eyes could have broken any heart. Daniel refused to let it sway him. "You have rounds."

"What's coming for her?"

"Take your shift, then ask Inati. Jeesu's sleeping."

Dongrim recognized the dismissal. With Daniel having already granted him the kindness of not telling Inati, Dongrim decided that pushing his luck would not be a good plan. He dipped his head in acknowledgement and fled out the window, as he was still banned from the infirmary.

Once he was gone Daniel sighed heavily.

"He's a good dog," Daniel whispered to Milly's sleeping form. "But he's rather masochistic."

Coming to sit carefully in the spot Dongrim had only just vacated, Daniel smiled at her. "Me? I like to keep things simple," he said, continuing his monologue. "I don't stick _my_ nose in the fire when the boss-man drops in some steak."

He paused crossing his arms over his chest. "It was better when things were simple, when there were rules we had to follow, you know?" he asked, looking over at her. He shifted onto his side, looking over Milly's sleeping form and brushing the side of her face. Running his thumb lightly over the pale skin, Daniel said, "It was always so hard to follow the rules, but we managed. Don't touch, don't tamper, don't get attached, don't let go; never hurt your feelings, but never get involved; pretend Inati's not a rutting hound, that Simon's not a bully, that Dongrim's not already hopeless. Jeesu is the only sane one, and he wants you just as much as I do."

Daniel sighed again. "Maybe things weren't so simple."

In her sleep, Milly responded to his discomfort and snuggled closer to him. "You're so sweet, Milly; so kind and gentle. I hope that you'll remember that."

Rolling away from her for a brief moment, Daniel stared up at the ceiling. His eyes traced the patterns in the tiles. "We can't win this one, not bound the way we are. If there was any other way, I'd take it. Inati's trying to think of a battle plan, but we're outmatched. Even on a good day, winning this would be hard."

Lapsing into silence and turning back to Milly, Daniel just stared at her for a while. For so long their only creed had been to protect her, to keep her from getting hurt at all costs. And now, in order to save her, Daniel had to hurt her. "Like a bandage, quick and clean," he whispered to himself unconvincingly.

With a deep breath, Daniel lifted himself up, holding his frame just inches over hers. He lowered his face to put his cheek next to hers, the sparks of her energy making his skin tingle. Dropping his voice to dip into the power stores he could still access, despite the bindings, Daniel whispered, "Milly, _wake up_."

Her reaction was immediate.

Millicent LeBourghe's eyes flicked open, revealing the blackest eyes imaginable.

She stared at Daniel for half a second; at her disobedient dog, trying to give an order to its master.

"_Off_."

The wave of power has such force to it that Daniel was launched into the air, sent sliding across the floor. The windows were blown out. The wind inside the hospital room began to pick up, swirling around Milly's figure. She shifted slightly, lifting herself up into a sitting position. Her black eyes looked over her shoulder, through the wall, past the bounds of St. Aggie's, at the thing that was coming to challenge her authority.

As the winds intensified, Milly lifted off the bed, hovering effortlessly as she drifted towards the ceiling. Dematerializing as she reached it, Milly passed through and continued to rise until she was stationed high overtop the roof.

Inside her suite, the winds nearly evaporated when she left, now coming in only through the blown out window. Daniel set his jaw as Inati arrived.

"What did you _do_?"

"It doesn't matter," Daniel said, looking over Inati's skin as the charcoal ooze of the binding insignias swirled into nothingness as their entrapments melted away. His own tattoos tingled and then shimmered away as well. His plan had worked.

"We're off the leash."

**_~Pas Fini~_**

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**_A/N:_ **Thanks so much for your support guys! Personally, this is my favorite chapter. Jeesu gets a bit gypped in it, in terms of screen time, but he's out doing his job like an awesome puppy, so if he's your bias, I guess you can take that as your consolation prize? Story-wise in the MV I've based this whole thing off of, Jeesu's role is the smallest, so I guess that's what's happened here. I don't know, anyway, he's got a much larger role in the next chapter, so keep your eyes open for it!

And again, **thank you so much for reading!**


	4. TAMED

**Fandom**: Dalmatian, E.R. mv & teaser-pics (Magic AU)  
**Pairings**: Simon x Fem OC ; Simon x Inati ; Simon/FemOC/Inati ; YoungWon (Dongrim) x Fem OC  
**Rating**: PG-13 (violence x sexual themes)  
**Chp WC**: 9,020

**Summary**: Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard her. It 's no simple task when it's the things that haunt the nightmares of children that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, and more importantly, towards each other …

* * *

{_聖の家__:_ _奈落の番犬_} (naraku no banken)

The House of Saints: Hell Hounds

**~Tamed~**

There is a phrase that people use to describe the immoral man.

'_His soul is blacker than the Night',_ they say.

But they're wrong.

There is nothing blacker than the Night.

Human kind has lit its fires, shone it's little lights into the dark.

They've made the nighttime sparkle, to twinkle with the glitter of false security. The eye lights of the nighttime creatures assure them that the black is filled with life, familiar somehow because of it.

They don't know that the creatures they see are just the small and fragile ones, little life forms on the run from bigger things. The things that humans don't see are the things so black their eyes don't shine, things so cruel and vile they can't be named. They drip with the very essence of the night, the black and creeping ooze of nightmares that humanity has shied away from since the beginning, pretending them out of the human reality.

But the Night lives on in the background.

In the dim corners of the mind a bit of blackness can take root. The seep and spawn of searing ink burns, charring away at everything good and light as it corrodes the human soul from within. The darkness twists motives, warps values, delicately deteriorates the ability of people to understand the fault of sin. It tempts them into the black, as willing victims make the sweetest prey, and it swells with their freely given lifeblood.

There is nothing darker than Night.

Millicent LeBourghe was the daughter of darkness, the unholy offspring of the Fallen Bearer of Light and the Black of Endless Night.

The power welled within her was that of humans' lost potential, the life and hope and heart they'd signed away wholesale. It was raw and violent and yearning, and so unbearably _human_. It called out to the dumb beasts of the Black like a beacon of salvation, jeered at the higher beings that had already tasted her bitter false promises and sought revenge. And it called to the Night itself, the Black that always wanted more.

But she was not an undefended existence.

From the very fiber of her power, beings were amassed; melded out of the blackest of the damned, the worst of humanity so twisted the result was hardly human, and glued together by the indisputable influence of her will into Dogs to serve and stand guard. They were designed to be her workers; hounds to stand at her heel, holding on her whatever she handed them be it her purse on a day out shopping or the heavy thoughts of a broken heart. Her Dogs were made of humanity's darkest days. They weren't supposed to be her friends, but they were created in the sea of humanity and all its complexities. They were bred to be loyal, to love her unconditionally, and serve beyond expectation.

Millicent LeBourghe had ended up as a mere maid at St Aggie's because when she'd first been unleashed upon the world, she hadn't been able to handle her power. The St. Aggie's staff _had_. Milly had been bound, her memories of Hell suppressed behind wall, her powers siphoned through her protectors and recycled into the very Pit from which her well of black drew up energy to replace what she lost.

The excess of energy, the leftover residue that couldn't be drained by her Dogs, was funneled into physical labor. The services she provided to St Aggies were entirely superfluous and meant only to give her an outlet of activity. In truth Milly was an honored guest, insulated by her place in St Aggie's for her protection, with her entourage extending to protect the school in turn.

She was the only one who had forgotten.

She had been steered away from certain things; razors that could bleed into sigils and seals and call up memories, tempting attire that might drive the Dogs around her to step above their bounds and take her as she grew up and her hormones overwhelmed their senses, and books that told black fables that might make her recall the truth of Night.

Her entire life had been an elaborate dance designed to keep her safe and happy, beneficent in all things. And now the charade that had made that life possible had been consumed by the sludge of the Night coming up to fill the emptiness she'd been able to hide from the Dogs she loved more than anything. It was overwhelming; the rush was suffocating, drowning her within herself.

Unable to breathe, unable to scream, unable to cry or laugh or feel, Milly was lost. Lying on her back, she was floating away in the black. Alone in the dark tunnel, Milly didn't know where she was going, where she even _could_ be going. She was alone and she was lonely, missing the friends around her with the same visceral longing of a person missing their limbs. Breathing in without taking in any air, Milly wondered how long she'd been floating there, in this strange, silent abyss in the black behind a wall. It might have been a day, or two, or two hundred and two.

. . . _Milly_

There echos in the black, echos of a life half lived, of a recent past half remembered, of a distant memory half forgotten. It was her fault somehow, all of this. She could feel her friends hurting, she always could. She'd sent them all away, she was to blame for how they were always hurting, and how she herself had been hurting. She had never cried in front of them; not really at least, not for this horrible loneliness she felt, how could she? She wasn't alone, the friends she had would support her through anything; thunderstorms, bellyaches, boredom, anything. How unfair would it be to them if she tried to explain that despite it all, she felt an acute disconnect to them. She loved all of them so dearly, and yet every time she met with them, spoke with them, played around and laughed with them, it felt like something was wrong, something was missing.

It was just so frustrating. Milly couldn't remember when she'd started to feel off around them, like something was stuck between them all. She'd tamped the feeling down and had been able to make herself have fun, but the tickle in the back of her mind had never gone away entirely. She felt cold, numb. There was a dull pain in her chest, heartache caused by cardiac arrest. Or maybe it was the other way around, her heart had stopped beating because it hurt too much to carry on.

She could just barely remember Daniel, talking to her before she opened her eyes to look out on the black of Night. He'd been talking to her, but the memory was muddled, muffled by distance like she'd been underwater as he'd spoken. And she remembered that first shot of pain in her chest, the heat an fury from just before she went numb.

_Milly_.

When Milly opened her eyes the world was slightly fuzzy, hazy with the warmth of a half-remembered summer afternoon. The breeze blew lightly through the courtyard, the trickle of clear water into the fountain's pool echoed around her. She was sitting on the edge, stone yellowed with age, as she stared down into the fountain's swirling patterns that followed the hand she was dragging back and forth through the pool.

Looking up to find the source of her echoed name, she found that the courtyard was empty of anyone, or anything she should have brought to work on. Milly had forgotten why she'd come out to the sunny space. Usually, she would bring some needle work that she had to finish up out to the courtyard. On days like this it was impossible to stay away from the space, but she did have her chores to attend to.

"Milly!"

Jeesu came barreling in, skidding across the cobblestones with the sweet-natured abandon that belied his sensible maturity. He toppled over into the fountain, the splash making Milly shy away as she laughed. Holding out her hand to help Jeesu clamber out of the fountain, Milly asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I finished early!" Jeesu yipped happily, shaking the water from his hair like an over grown dog. "And Dongrim's not done yet, so I came to play with you!"

Smiling at the infectious cheer Jeesu carried with him, Milly said, "I still have work to do!"

"Just for a little bit! You never take any breaks," Jeesu complained, tugging on her hand. Milly resisted only for a moment before following out of the courtyard towards the stables to Jeesu's excitedly voiced delight.

The sheep and horses never liked Jeesu, but it was one of his favorite things to chase them around inside the paddock behind the barn. Today, there were just sheep let out to graze and Milly joined in as Jeesu went about corralling the adorable creatures that seemed out of sorts in their summer-sheared coats.

Their game evolved into one of those nonsensical things that have no real goal, no real divide between the sides, and bickering about who had won despite the fact that there was no real way to win. The bickering between them lasted all the way to the kitchens, not least because Milly was insisting that she make Jeesu something to eat before he went back to work.

Jeesu submitted and docilely plopped his chin in his hand as he leaned over the stone counter that Milly set to work at kneading out dough for bread on top of. After a few minutes of watching her work, Jeesu said, "Milly, can I ask you something?"

"Of course! Anything!"

"Do you like us?"

Milly paused, looking up to see Jeesu staring at her like a puppy with a dollop of frosting on its nose that it couldn't quite reach. "Of course, I like you! You five are my best friends in the whole world."

Beaming, Jeesu asked immediately, "Who's your favorite?"

"What?"

His question caught Milly by surprise.

"Which one of us do you like the best?"

Throwing a handful of flour at him with a laugh, as she turned to finish up her bread, Milly responded, "Why would I have a favorite?"

"Because."

"Well, I don't have a favorite."

"Why not?"

"Because I like you all, equally!" Milly asserted throwing her dough down onto the baking pallet.

She slid it into the oven as Jeesu protested, "But that's not really fair! I'm much more fun than Inati is!"

"But Inati doesn't ask me weird questions," Milly countered. "Though, I suppose I don't like you all equally, I like you all _differently_. The way Inati takes care of you all-"

"I take care of Dongrim!" Jeesu interjected.

Milly laughed at his petulance. "You're like a good big brother though, well, really more like a helpful little brother. You definitely support Dongrim, Inati . . . he takes care of all of you like a good captain should. He keeps you crazies all in line, but he's never harsher than he has to be, and he picks up all your slack when you all run off to come and play with me!" When Jeesu pouted, Milly laughed. Then she added, "He's so . . . steady, you know? Unwavering and strong . . . and soft, somewhere deep inside that scary guy's got a sweet side. He really makes you feel safe."

Pouting, Jeesu muttered, "You just don't know how many laps he makes us run." He was thinking of more than Inati's drills; Jeesu's thoughts were on the leader's erratic behavior, his violence, his mood swings . . . 'safe' was one of the last things Jeesu felt around Inati, at least recently.

"You've lived through it all so far."

Jeesu just grumbled incoherently. Milly smiled and went back to her main point, "For Inati, it's the way he takes care of you. For Daniel, it's how he's so sweet and snarky; whenever I talk to him, I feel like he's being entirely honest with me, even when I know he's spouting nothing but lies. There's always _something_ true, some deeper meaning to what he says. He listens to you, _understands_. And then he somehow makes it all better, even though what he tells you makes almost no sense because he's obviously lying."

Jeesu had to admit there was a certain ring of truth in Milly's estimate. Daniel was the packs great peacekeeper after all. The only thing in question was how Milly knew he was lying to her, Daniel's expertise in the practice had managed to get him past Inati's discerning interrogations on more than one occasion. Jeesu's attention would have spiraled away had Milly not still been talking. "For Dongrim, it's how he always listens. He'll pay attention even when I prattle on about stupid things. Like this one time I was upset that I didn't have any real friends, which is ridiculous because I have you guys, but he listened to me, made me feel like I was completely normal, he validated my idiocy, let me get it out. He always listens like what I have to say is earth shatteringly important, like it actually _matters_ to him."

Dongrim would love to hear that Milly had noticed, Jeesu thought. He would have to tell his comrade. It would only get his hopes up that little bit higher, make the inevitable disappointment hurt all the more, but it would be a momentary happiness, and with Dongrim's recent troubles, any moment of happiness was something to cherish. As Jeesu smiled to himself, Milly finished, "And of course, for you it's the way that you're the fun one." She winked at him. "If anyone on earth can spend five minutes with you and not be grinning ear to ear and wiling to go rolling in the grass like a five year old without any hesitation . . . I can't even imagine. You've never failed to cheer me up, not once. You even make me happier when I'm already happy!"

Fluffing up happily at Milly's words about him, Jeesu pressed, "And what about Simon?"

"hmm, I don't really know," Milly said thoughtfully. "There's something about him . . . he's not quite personable him when he talks to me, but he's very firm about it, very opinionated and 'devil may care'. I feel like he's stuck somehow, like he has no idea who he is or what he wants. I wish I could help him somehow. Sometimes I see this . . . softness in him, something scarred and hurting and still tender to the touch. Sometimes, when it's just the two of us, I see him smile and, even though he's an idiot and mean sometimes, I think that if I could just _talk _to him, just make him really listen . . . "

There was something strange in Jeesu's eyes just then, something almost sad. "Milly," he started quietly, standing up and looking to her hopefully, "I wanna show you something."

"The bread's almost ready."

"It'll only take a minute."

Milly stood firm. "I'm not letting it burn."

Jeesu grinned and settled back to his seat. "Okay then, I guess it can wait a little."

Smiling, Milly came to sit beside him. She leaned up against his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "I've missed you," she told him, breathing him in. It felt like it had been so long since they'd just sat together, since he had been a real and solid presence, a stable structure in her life.

"We miss you too."

The bread came out of the oven eventually, and Milly had just set it down to cool when Jeesu grabbed her hand. Giving it a tug, he said, "Come on, we're gonna be late."

"Late for what?"

Towing her out of the kitchen, Jeesu led the way across the courtyard and through the halls to Milly's bedroom. When Jeesu swung the door open, Milly noticed that something was wrong immediately. That the passage in the depths of the windowless hall had been made bright with candlelight, but Milly was surprised that her bedroom was the same. She had three large windows in her room, windows that ought to have been open to the afternoon sunlight. Instead, the curtains blew in gentle breeze of midnight.

"What on earth?" Milly asked, rushing to the window.

"What?"

"It was just the afternoon, but now it's night," Milly marveled, not scared so much as stunned. There was no hint of terror, just awe.

Jeesu didn't respond. Instead, he leapt onto her bed and buried himself in the pillows. "Come and play!"

As Milly stepped away from the window, she tripped over something behind her and tumbled to the floor, knocking a candle and its stand over and scraping her hand on the unexpectedly sharp foot of the stand. The blood began to drip from the wound and Milly stared at it, utterly enthralled.

The viscous drip of red was like nothing she had ever seen, and yet it was a vital part of who she was. Realizing that was fascinating to her. The blood pooled in her hand, at the rate it was going she would lose consciousness in a few more minutes if the wound went untreated.

Jeesu was next to her in an instant, hand hovering around the wound as if worried that a touch would make it worse. "I'll be fine," Milly promised before he could voice concern. Jeesu didn't seem very soothed by her announcement. Anyone could tell that she was not just going to be fine.

Then he grinned. "Wanna know a secret?"

Milly looked at him, perplexed. He used his index finger to sweep up some of the blood on Milly's hand. Deftly, he used her blood like red ink to draw a little circle on the floor and fill it with a complicated pattern of lines. "It's a magic trick," Jeesu explained, grabbing the wrist above Milly's bleeding hand and using it to press her wound down into the circle.

Briefly, the whole circle lit up and flickered like a candle. The space beneath Milly's palm was suddenly warm, searing hot even.

Milly snatched her hand away and the light died. Her hand was no longer bleeding. She looked to Jeesu stunned. "I remember this," she murmured. "You fixed my hand when we were kids."

"Not quite. _You_ fixed your hand," Jeesu corrected.

Recalling what had happened next, Milly's head swung violently to look at her door. "Inati saw you show me."

"Inati sees everything."

"But this time he was angry."

Sure enough, Inati burst through the door, glaring down his subordinate. It was the Inati she remembered, so much younger than the one she'd seen this morning, so long ago it seemed to her and yet so far ahead of when this had taken place. "Jeesu, you didn't finish your rounds," Inati's voice was cold, but Milly could feel the fury boiling under them.

Jeesu had slunk out the door then, cowering almost under Inati's glare. The pack leader had come to Milly's side then. He righted the candle stick, re-lit it's candle. He hadn't asked to see Milly's hand, but his eyes kept looking towards it in the dim light as Milly had slowly stood and made her way back to bed. Her hand tingled at the memory. Inati had seemed so indomitable, so cold and unyielding. But Milly could see his concern.

"Come with me," Jeesu chirped, calling Milly's attention away. He gleefully grabbed Milly's hand and leapt to his feet. Milly was towed up with him and then pulled out the window as Jeesu launched himself away and she was dragged along behind.

This wasn't how Milly remembered it.

They landed on their backs in a pile of fresh sheets, still warm from the sun. They weren't in the courtyard below her window.

"What's going on?"

Jeesu grinned at her.

"You're dreaming, silly."

This wasn't Jeesu's voice. It was Daniel's. But it wasn't the fully grown Daniel she was used to, this was the ten year old Daniel who'd been teasing her about how she'd caught him talking to the Hunting Hounds of St. Aggie's.

"You were talking to them, like they could really understand you!" Milly squeaked, recalling the day in detail. "You were talking to them, and they were listening. It even seemed like one had answered."

Daniel responded, but not directly. He responded to the very similar words Milly had spoken years ago. "Like I said, you were lost in a daydream! Dogs can't talk to people. They probably can't even tell that people are _talking_, to them it's just noise."

"That's not true! Dogs are very smart! Smarter than most humans, nicer too," Milly responded, knowing that she'd held similar sentiments even then.

She'd missed Daniel's surprised expression at her announcement when it happened, but this time around she caught it plain as day when it flashed quickly over his features. The chagrined smile had been unmistakeable from the beginning though. "You are absolutely insane, Milly," he'd said, shaking his head.

Jeesu spoke over the end of Daniel's reply, "Come on, we're running late."

"Late for what?"

"You'll see."

Jeesu pulled her into another passage, one where most of the torches had burned down into charcoal. Milly yanked her hand back from Jeesu, beginning to feel a bit of fear creeping in. This wasn't quite as amazing as it had seemed before. When it had just been one isolated thing, something dramatically not right, it was interesting, but this was getting to be too much, too confusing. Milly couldn't keep up.

"What's going on?" she asked. "Jeesu, talk to me!"

Smiling sadly, Jeesu replied, "You already know what's going on, Milly. I can't tell you, it's not allowed. Even now it's not . . . but you do know, Milly, I know you do. Daniel thinks so too. It's something that you're simply refusing to see."

Stepping back away from her as he spoke, Jeesu had vanished into the shadows before Milly had even registered that he had begun to move. She sighed and let her shoulders sag.

"It's just a night mare, it can't hurt you."

The voice was Inati's, a younger Inati than she knew now, but an older version than the one that had burst in after Jeesu's magic trick. Milly couldn't place him exactly until she heard her own voice, the nine year-old version of her voice, coming from behind her.

"Miss Amy didn't like my drawing," little Milly cried as her older counterpart looked on, stunned. "She said it was a bad thing. She said it was a scary thing that didn't really exist and if I thought about it at all again I needed to tell her and I needed to stop thinking about it. But I don't want to."

Then Milly remembered. This was the last night she had dreamed of the Dogs. When she'd been very small she dreamt of big dogs running through her head, running running running through the black behind her eyes. They hadn't seemed the least bit scary to her until she'd drawn them for the woman who'd more or less raised her. They hadn't come out right in her drawing, they had looked big and mean and truly frightening, not at all like the Hounds in her head.

Miss Amy had explained that the big bad dogs in her dreams couldn't hurt her. She'd done something else too, and then the Dogs had never come back. Milly missed them.

Inati had been puzzled by the reaction.

He didn't know how to comfort her. He wanted to, more than anything, and Milly could see it on his face. The younger version of her hadn't seen it; she'd just seen the thirteen year old friend she'd asked more than once to make sure there weren't any monsters under her bed. He was 'safe' to her, he _always_ made her feel safe, but she couldn't quite understand him; he was too stiff and formal to make sense to a lively little girl.

Milly felt a touch against her hand and turned to see Dongrim staring intently at her, his eyes dark with worry. Milly's whole body flooded with relief. She jumped at him, flinging herself into the safety of his familiar arms.

Holding him tight, she asked, "What's going on?"

"We didn't want to make you remember," Dongrim said, petting her hair. "We didn't realize how little you had forgotten . . . I can't believe I never noticed."

"What are you talking about?"

Milly looked up from where her face had been pressed into his shoulder. They were in her room, but it looked wrong again, like it had with Jeesu. There was a fire lit and the shutters were closed up like they were in the depths of winter. Refusing to take more than a step away from Dongrim, Milly edged over to the fire, crouching down to stand before the flames. When she bent down, Dongrim crouched with her.

"You shouldn't play with fire, Milly," Dongrim chided lightly when Milly stuck her hand inside the flames.

"I remember this," she said slowly, marveling at how the flames lapped at her skin, do no more damage than turning the skin bright pink as if she'd left her arm in the hot waters of the Laundry for a bit too long. "I couldn't sleep; a night mare or something. You came in through the window."

"Inati would never have let any of us by if we'd tried the door."

"He was outside, worried. I could feel it somehow."

"He could feel that you were," Dongrim explained. "We all could."

Inati had cared so much for Milly. Maybe it was because he was the pack leader and had the most of her power being washed through his system, maybe it was because he'd been the first created to guard her, or maybe it was the years of watching her grow up as a sweet and gentle soul so unlike his own . . . Dongrim, as much as he hated Inati for having claimed Milly and then practically ignored the role that gave him, knew that Inati truly did care for her. He just couldn't show it.

But that left Milly without a hand to hold at night and Dongrim had stepped up to fill that void. "We could all feel that you were worried, and that's why Daniel didn't stop me from slipping in though the window. He knew you needed someone."

"How?"

"It's part of our job."

"But how can that even be possible?"

Dongrim rested his chin on Milly's shoulder for a moment, staring into the flames with her as the bright shapes danced around her hand. "You're special, Milly."

There was a sudden clap of thunder and Milly spun wildly around. The shutters were still closed up, but the fire had been extinguished with a hiss that drew Milly's attention back around. This was a storm that she remembered, the worst that she remembered.

Dongrim hadn't been the one to save her that night. He could usually be counted onto appear beside her whenever she felt down or worried, but that night it was Daniel that came to hold her hand. He'd come in and sat at the end of her bed while she'd been cowering under a pile of pillows. He told her how thunderstorms worked, how the hot and cold air currents moved against each other in a violent dance.

It wasn't scary he had said, it was beautiful.

"He wasn't talking about the storm," Dongrim explained as Milly stood and wandered over to the bed, reliving the memory. "This storm was on the first day that Simon touched you without your permission, he'd managed to grab your hand somehow. Inati had been furious . . . When Daniel came to you, Jeesu and I were out on rounds, he'd only just managed to break up the fight on his own."

Inati had always been the cold one, cool and collected with ice in his eyes and a hard shells that Milly could never seem to break through, no matter how warm-hearted her attempts, nor valiant his attempts to care for her.

And then there was Simon.

"Scaredy cat."

Hot and stirring Simon, he was a tornado of fire that swirled around her existence with ease while she fought to keep cool and calm.

The décor in Milly's room had changed. She was fourteen or so now. This storm had been nearly as bad as the one from when she was twelve, only tempered by the fact that she was older now. She didn't need Daniel or Dongrim to come save her this time, but she was still afraid.

Simon had melted into the room somehow while she'd been hiding under the pillows. She'd thought he'd walked through the door, but now she knew Inati wouldn't have allowed it. He'd been glib and mocking even then.

"It's just a little thunderstorm."

Milly had wanted to throw a pillow at him. She still didn't know exactly why she didn't, but she definitely didn't. Instead she'd simply stared at him, at the swirl of black ink that marked his chest, that hung 'round his neck like a collar, that wound about his arms like a straight jacket. She'd stared at the well toned body, as muscles that ached to be used, and the dark eyes that hid from everything, looking down judgmentally on the world to justify a retreat from it. Simon unsettled her. She knew he was unhappy, that life in St. Aggie's wasn't nearly the comfortable affair it was for the others. Milly knew that Inati went hard on him, that he was rebellious and wanted to do what _he_ wanted to do.

She knew that he didn't know what he wanted to do.

The winds howling outside the windows settled down a bit and Milly went to the window with Dongrim close behind. Simon stayed in the shadows by the fire as Milly opened the shutters to see that the waning nighttime storm had been replaced by the building grey of an afternoon down pour. Looking to Dongrim, Milly sat down on the sill and lifted her legs over the side. Her room was on the second floor, but she'd been able to sneak out like this many times before. Dongrim smiled softly. He kissed her cheek, an acceptance of final farewell, and then he stepped away instead of following her lead.

Milly's inertia took her over the side before she could do more than call out to him.

Alone again as she regained her feet in the soft grass below her window, Milly looked around at the grey wall of thunderclouds aiming themselves at St Aggie's. The wind was building around her, blowing her hair and her short red skirt around violently.

"You should be inside, Milly."

Daniel's voice was teasing and amused, well aware that if she wanted to stand out in the rain, then she was simply going to do so. This wasn't a young Daniel that she recognized from a memory; this was her very solid friend come to tease her.

"I still don't understand what's going on," Milly told him as he strode over to her nonchalantly in the building storm. He was already soaked from it.

"But you're starting to, aren't you?" he asked. "You're starting to see that you've always been special."

"Special how?"

Daniel, in his usual light and flirty tone, responded, "We'd thought that you'd forgotten; hoped it, rather. It wasn't fun for _us_ being down in the Dark, and we thought it must have been the same for you. We shouldn't have though, because you were _always _special."

Used to his pleasant evasions, Milly didn't let the point rest. "Special _how_?"

"You liked us."

Daniel's genuinely happy smile caught Milly off guard. Compared to the seriousness of his words, of the tone he'd spoken with, the smile seemed out of place. "Why shouldn't I have liked you? You're all so wonderful."

"Ah, well maybe, but only _you_ can see that."

"What do you mean?"

Daniel shrugged. "Take me, for example. I talk you round in circles, I never tell the whole truth, I steal things without regret, and I let Inati treat Simon unfairly without batting an eye," he explained. "I lie to your face and do it with a smile. I'm shamelessly manipulative, and I'm disastrously efficient. Like this whole thing now, whatever's happening to you at the moment is entirely my fault. I'm the one that made you wake up."

"But you're so sweet! You help me with my chores and you never ask for extra handouts! And you bring me stories and you're the one that helped me learn how to read them! And sure, you lie, but you always say what's important. You do what you think is best, it's not some cold efficiency, it's necessity!"

"I wasn't supposed to do any of that; you were supposed to be off limits, you weren't supposed to be able to read, or to finish up your chores before you'd gotten tired," Daniel retorted, not giving an inch. "And you definitely weren't supposed to wake up. You're dangerous, to us, to St. Aggie's, even to yourself."

Milly sighed. She wasn't going to win her case. Daniel was still one of her very best friends though, no matter what he thought about himself. "Then what about Jeesu? Hm? He's the nicest person ever, and he always has a new game in mind to play. Why shouldn't I have liked the guy that's never failed to make me laugh?"

"He has no volition. He gets and order and he follows it, and has no thought beyond that. He only came to play with you because no one had told him not to. If he were left out on his own, he'd never be able to survive," Daniel listed out bluntly. He wasn't pulling any punches in this, Milly _had_ to understand.

"He takes care of Dongrim," Milly countered effortlessly.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "True, Dongrim wouldn't have been able to live without Jeesu's support, and Jeesu's prerogative has always been the order to keep the Pack at its peak. But he's still only doing it for his own satisfaction, giving Dongrim hope like he has, just to keep him living and breathing, working as a full fledged member of the pack . . . it's really quite selfish. But it is still true, Dongrim . . . without Jeesu, he definitely would have dropped dead ages ago."

"Dongrim can take care of himself," Milly asserted.

"Dongrim can take care of _you_. He's too focused, too obsessive. Once he found that you needed someone close to you emotionally, he became the one that could be by letting go of everything else," Daniel replied. "He's the jealous type, easily angered and hot headed, possessive, defensive, vengeful, and everything else that a good and stable person isn't. And he's entirely masochistic."

"Masochistic?"

"He would've let Inati have you without question, if Inati ever took a step to do it, that is; and every time he came to see you, he knew that it might be the last time Inati let him do it."

"Inati can't just _have_ me," Milly protested immediately. Then she asked, "Inati _let_ him come see me?"

"Inati is our leader and his word is our highest law; save for yours, of course," Daniel responded. "And Inati's place with you is supposed to be as the undisputed closest of us to you. Something like your favorite."

Thinking over Inati's history with her, Milly couldn't quite see it. Inati had been the main reason she always felt secure inside St Aggie's, his protection of the place had seemed indomitable, but he'd always felt so distant from her. Looking back at everything, she realized that he'd never been far away from her, he'd always been right there to guard and watch over her. He'd been so good at half of his job, the protecting her body from harm part, that he'd been entirely unable to perform the other half, the protecting her mind and emotions part.

"Inati's failures are easy to see," Daniel mentioned, going on with his argument that Milly shouldn't have liked any of them. "He's never really let himself feel anything, except what you were. He did his job, but never respected himself for it and you were always a little bit scared of him. So he kept his distance from you, let Dongrim dig himself into a hole by your side. He's possessive of you though, and he has an _awful _temper. I can't tell you how many times I've had to step in to keep him from killing all the people you talk to. Even the students of St Aggie's weren't safe, which is why you were hardly ever allowed to see any of them. He's actually killed one or two that I didn't know about until afterwards. Even his own packmates were on the chopping block if they got too close to you. Jealousy is not a strong enough word to cover it. And it was his own fault too, if he'd ever said anything to you about it, you would have been able to set him straight pretty easily."

Milly nodded slowly, about to say that it wasn't entirely his fault. He'd been trying to keep his distance because she'd been scared of him, after all.

"But he still had the, uh, 'male urges' shall we say, as if he _was_ with you as a partner. He had it more acutely than the rest of us and he spent your late teens sleeping his way through almost every girl enrolled at St Aggie's," Daniel interrupted, before Milly had even begun. "And he didn't think anything of it, never cared that some of the girls fell in love and got hurt because he didn't care or that he was supposed to be reserved for you alone. He had his job as he saw it, and he did his job, releasing himself as necessary so that he could focus on the job."

At this point, Milly was frowning. She didn't particularly like the faults of her friends being paraded out in front of her like this. But Daniel was relentless.

"You should be able to guess Simon's issues without even trying."

"He's always been a little rebellious," Milly admitted. "A bit precocious . . ."

"That's an understatement. No matter what order Inati gave, Simon would find a way to weasel his way out of it. He refused to make friends, tried to make us all angry, and most importantly, he bullied you," Daniel expanded. "Emotionally, physically . . . sexually too, in some ways."

Milly couldn't think of anything to say back at Daniel. She couldn't deny his words, she'd seen them play out before her often enough. But she could try to soften their sting. "He was always completely honest, though. When he didn't like something he said so, and when I was being ridiculous, he pointed it out. He might not have been the nicest person to do it, but he was always honest. And whenever he talked with me . . . he felt very present, like the whole world existed in just those few minutes . . .It was always a nice feeling, that immediacy and honesty."

Smiling at her determination to see the good side of things, Daniel replied, "He wasn't _always_ honest, not with himself at least."

"What do you mean?"

Daniel sighed heavily. "St Aggie's made you fall asleep, and we were left to wake you up," he said, cryptically. He leaned over quickly to give Milly a kiss on the cheek. "I'm sorry, Milly, but it had to be done."

Lighting cracked almost directly above them and Milly looked up at the dark grey of the clouds being split by the purple bruise of lightning. When her eyes flicked back down, Daniel was gone. She called out to him in confusion as it began to rain.

"Milly."

She turned around to see Inati standing out in the downpour with her. He came to stand beside her as she looked back to where Daniel had been. Neither of them said anything for a few moments as the storm raged around them.

Milly grabbed lightly onto Inati's hand.

"You're hurting."

"I failed."

"You didn't," Milly countered, giving his hand a squeeze. "You've always been right beside me; you've always kept me safe."

Sparks as bright and strong as the lightning around them began to build around Milly's hand, the one she held Inati's with. Black sparks from his power began to rise to match them as she slowly put together the pieces of her conscious memory, from when Jeesu had showed her how to heal her hand herself to how she had healed Dongrim only just recently.

All the little mysteries, the static sparks, the quick recoveries, the little secrets, they hadn't just been glimpses at the thing she couldn't remember, they'd been bubbles of her own memory suppression breaking free and boiling over. She'd never _really_ forgotten, she'd just tamped the memories down like a good little girl doing what the grown-ups told her to. It was her fault that her Dogs were hurting, and that was something she couldn't tolerate any longer.

Standing there in the midst of the storm with Inati, as the wind raged, lighting thrashed among the clouds, and thick bullets of rain pelted down, Milly felt perfectly safe.

With Inati standing beside her, she knew she always would.

"I couldn't save you this time," Inati told her.

"I think you still can," Milly responded.

"You don't know what's out there."

"Actually, I _do_."

Milly let the power she'd forgotten course through her, lifting her onto her toes and then off the ground entirely. It was just a few inches at first, enough to let her kiss Inati on the cheek. "You're my good dog, Inati, and you still have a job to do."

Milly began to lift further away from him, looking up into the black bellow of clouds. He held onto her hand, resisting her departure. This time, like she had with Dongrim, Milly was moving on without her companion. But this time she knew it, and this time, it was Inati that was resisting the transition.

"I'll be back soon," Milly promised, as she finally lifted out of Inati's reach. "And I know that you'll be standing at my side, tall and proud with your pack."

Drifting lightly through the torrent of wind and rain, Milly touched down inside the bell tower of St Aggie's, the highest point on the grounds and one of Simon's favorite hiding places. He wasn't there at the moment, but as Milly looked out on the black mass seeping through the walls of St Aggie's, she knew he would be here soon.

Sure enough, she heard his footsteps pounding up the stairs as he came in, skidding to a stop and panting heavily from the exertion.

Milly let him breathe a moment before she asked, "What is it exactly?"

Trying to gain some composure and take up the high ground he was so used to having with her, Simon replied, "What? You can't even recognize your own cousin? I knew your side of the family got gypped in the brawn department, but brains too? I guess you are just a pretty-faced princess."

Milly didn't respond to his gibe.

"I'm related to that thing? Tell me how."

"You're related in a way, it's much older than you, and much less powerful. It was spawned by the Black, before Lucifer had even fallen. Its power comes exclusively from the constancy of Night, instead of also drawing on the flaws of man, like you can," Simon explained, mesmerized as he looked out at the black sludge.

"You're wrong," Milly said suddenly after a moment of silence. "It's not just the Dark that gives me power. It's the Light too, neither can exist in isolation. The real power comes from walking on the line between them."

Holding her hand out into the deluge, Milly let the rain run over it. Little sparks, black and white, played about her hand in the onslaught of water. She lifted off the floor, floating out a few feet into the open air as Simon stared.

And then the lightning struck her.

It smoothly used her as a conduit and then struck straight into the heart of the thing attacking St. Aggies's, adding damage ten-fold to the wounds the Dogs had torn into the creature. The black mass was vaporized instantly. It may have been powerful, and she might have been more so, but neither of them were exactly natural, and nothing in the universe was more powerful than the universe itself.

As Milly began to sag in her flight, the result of being used to funnel the raw power of nature, Simon grabbed her hand. "Milly!"

He yanked her down, into the safety of the bell tower and the surprise of a kiss.

Simon was the one that broke it, but not because it burned like any of his past kisses. He broke it because it felt good, acceptable, _right._

"That wasn't supposed to happen, none of this was supposed to happen," Simon spewed, staring at Milly with wide eyes.

In the space of the kiss, they'd zapped out of the stormy bell tower. Now, still wind-ruffled, wet and dripping they were standing in the middle of a warm and grassy meadow, lit up to a golden glow by the late afternoon sun.

"It was all just a game to piss off the others, to make Inati squirm," Simon was continuing as Milly marveled at the translocation he hadn't seemed to notice. "I'm _immune_ to you."

"You've never seemed immune," Milly teased, sidling up to him as he had done to her so many times before.

Simon was adamant. "It was never real. I was just teasing you, trying to trip you up all over yourself to make Inati mad."

"You were having _fun_."

"In order to make everyone else miserable."

Milly just smiled. "But it was real. You were _really_ having fun with it. Being around me made you happy. I saw you smile."

Simon stared at her, looking her over carefully. This wasn't the timid and forgetful Milly that had been he'd been haunting for so many years. This was Millicent LeBourghe, come into herself at last. She was still the playful and sweet Milly that she'd always been, but she was sure of where she stood in the world and how she worked within its design. She knew what she wanted and how to get it.

This Milly was powerful in a way that they'd never imagined Millicent being. More than confident, she was content. Simon had been immune to the blunt magnetism of her power, but he didn't stand a chance against her captivating smile.

When Milly held out her hand to him, Simon took it without hesitation. She smiled at him, squeezed his hand, and closed her eyes in contentment feeling the black swirl around her and the wall melt away as light and dark regained their proper balance inside of her. She was fully content.

And then Milly woke up.

She was in the St Aggie's infirmary, but not the suite she had fallen asleep in with Dongrim. It took her the next several minutes to sort out what had happened. The school had been under attack, and her Dogs hadn't been able to fight it off. She remembered hearing Daniel's voice, and then the wall inside her head came crumbling down.

Milly didn't quite understand what had happened after that.

It had been some sort of attempt of a shattered psyche to deal with the sudden rush of memories. At the same time, the visits made by her Dogs, some of them at least, had definitely been real; that much she was absolutely sure of.

Getting out of the hospital bed, Milly noticed that she wasn't in the red hospital gown she had been in before. Now, she wore a white wrap, a dress of her own choosing.

Her hair was still wet from the rain.

It took a few tries to recall how to tap into the power she'd only just remembered possessing, but once she had, Milly dried her hair into perfect shining curls.

Then she headed out to find her Dogs.

The infirmary staff were hovering round her the moment she opened her door, tittering that she ought to go lay down. None of them gave her an order, though; a thing she'd never noticed before but now knew had been their standard practice.

"Where are they?"

Who she meant by _they_ was unmistakable. The Orderlies all looked away sadly, save for the head nurse, the only one who knew the true extent of Milly's power in relation to the Dogs. "They didn't make it," she said quietly. "They're in the morgue."

Milly nodded and turned to walk away. The nurse caught her attention again, "Miss Milly?" When Milly looked back, the nurse revealed that she knew that Milly had gotten her memory back, "Would you like your things moved to a more suitable suite?"

"No." Milly's smile was reassuring, but her words were firm beyond contest. "I like my home how it is, thank you."

With that, Milly made her way downstairs.

The morgue was a dark space even when the fancy electric lights were on. Milly stepped lightly across the cold floor over to the five silver stretchers that bore the bodies of her best friends. Inati, Jeesu, Daniel, Dongrim, Simon; one by one she visited their sides, drawing her hand over their lifeless forms with the sparks of her power painting her own version of their old tattoos onto their bare skin.

As Dogs from the Pit, they needed a certain degree of bindings to keep them in this world at all. Their energies needed to be tied down into physical forms. The bindings St Aggie's had lain were also meant to tamp down their power and siphon Milly's through them at the same time. The bindings that Milly was now laying only ensured that that they were order-bound to inhabit their physical bodies.

They would always be with her, so long as she wanted them.

And she wanted them.

They didn't instantly take a breath once Milly had finished with each of their bindings, ordering them back up from the Pit to be with her. But she knew they would soon enough. When she got to Simon, she kissed him gently on the forehead, wondering how much of the scene from inside her head he would remember.

"Come on, boys," she whispered to them as she headed up the stairs to return to her room for a long over-due nap. "It's time to get back to work."

The lights flickered behind her as she flipped them off, a bit of residual current relighting the scene for a few seconds. After the first millisecond of darkness, when the lights came back on for a moment, they shone over a lifeless room filled with empty steel tables. Another flicker saw the pack gathered at the door. In the last flicker they were gone and the room was well and truly vacant.

The Dogs had a job to do, after all, and they couldn't be wasting any time with it.

**_ ~Finite~_**

* * *

**_A/N:_  
**So Simon wins. ^_~ He got the kiss in the MV, so he also got the kiss here! Actually I stayed really close to the MV in this one, all of Milly's thoughts play into the Lyrics, and and of the boys actions link directly to something they do in the MV. And of course, the last few paragraphs match the last few MV seconds perfectly. So I hope you've enjoyed it and **THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!**

Also, I've been getting a few questions on Tumblr about what else is chained up in St Aggie's and because of it, I might put up a little drabble about one of the other creepy creatures. It'll be a bonus chapter, rather than a new story, but it won't have anything to do with DMTN. If you're interested, it's probably going to be up by Thursday! ^_^


	5. Whispers in the Dark (Bonus Chapter)

So here's one more story about St Aggie's. This is in response to the tumblr questions about what else is locked up in this crazy place! It has nothing to do with the Hell Hounds, but of the other stuff I've written for St Aggie's I think it's the best. It's actually the first thing I wrote with the concept & it's based off Screw's "Deep Six" PV.

Trigger warning: Abuse (emotional & sexual), shaming, warped interpretations of the Catholic Church & it's less than sparkling reputation.

* * *

{_聖の家__: 黒のささやき_} (Higiri no Ie)

The House of Saints: Whispers in the Dark –

~The Contract~

.

Kayla knew she was pretty.

She'd always known it. Standing on the steps of Saint Aggie's, being told by a chillingly warm voice that she was 'such a pretty little trooper' was her very first memory. That was when she was four years old.

Fourteen years later, Kayla was more than pretty. She'd grown into her prettiness, matured into a great beauty. 36", 22", 36"; her measurements were more than perfect, and every time she was measured for the uniforms of Saint Aggie's Home for Orphans, she was told how beautiful she was.

Kayla knew she was pretty.

But she didn't see it as a good thing.

Kayla saw her beauty as a mark of her impurity, a mark that her 'good fortune' was some indication of an innate evil. Her succubus nature breaking free of whatever spell of humanity it had been contained by.

Because she _had_ to be impure.

She just had to be.

The Fathers at Saint Aggie's knew to punish her for it.

Especially Father Adrian. He would stare coldly at her in class, when she passed him in the halls, whenever she was running errands for the nuns . . . He would hold her after hours, ask her when the last time she Confessed was. He would frown when she said it had been a few days and demand to take it from her then.

The Confession was routine, but draining, and as a mark of God's renewed faith, Father Adrian would take her to his room for tea. He would give her a special lecture; he would kiss her as Jesus kissed Magdalene. He would love her as a Child.

She would pay devout attention, and laugh, and smile. Kayla would sit there and be pretty, be tempting.

Father Adrian would lie with her, then. He would tell her of her beauty, of her sin. He would bring her to a high and tell her that the way her body moved was divine, the sinful score stolen from Heaven by the Light Bringer himself. The world would go white behind her eyes, and then it would go black.

It was her fault, he'd say. It was the untempered temptation of her person, the way she wore her uniform, her hair. The way she smiled and laughed, the way she responded to his smallest touch . . . it was all her fault. And as punishment for Kayla's shameless allure, Father Adrian would lock her in the cellar beneath his chamber. It was a tiny, cold cube of air, deep beneath the main building of Saint Aggie's.

Kayla didn't know if a room existed on earth, let alone in Saint Aggie's that was darker, deeper, closer to Hell. And for years, Kayla would find herself in this little cell every few weeks. She would cry, and pray, and be numb. She would feel guilty.

And then one day, when she was nineteen, she simply would not.

"I hate him."

She didn't know if she said it aloud, or it merely echoed around in her head. With her forehead pressed to her knees, the cold stone walls pressing in against her on all sides, and the tears in her eyes refusing to fall, Kayla couldn't tell.

She screamed it. As loud as she could, over and over and over again. "I hate him, I hate him, I _hate _him."

_You Should._

If her movement hadn't been restricted by the stone of the ceiling, Kayla's head would have jerked back in surprise. The response was close, whispered. Male.

Kayla hugged her knees closer to her, trying to cover her nakedness in the black. Scared and confused . . . and relieved. Maybe the voice was one of Satan's minions, come to collect her for his army. But at least she wasn't alone anymore.

_You've never been alone, Kayla._

"What do you mean?"

_I've been watching you since you were very small._

"Who are you?"

_Are you sure you want to know?_

"I . . . I'm sorry."

_For what?_

"I shouldn't have said I hate him."

_But you do. And you should._

"Father Adrian says that hatred is immoral, that it goes against the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ. He says that to hold hatred in your heart is to deny God."

A cold laugh.

_ He is not a man of God._

"The Archbishop himself commends Father Adrian's teachings!"

_Because the Archbishop needed someone . . . needed to trade someone's soul so that he could _become_ the Archbishop. _

"What do you mean? Trade his soul?"

_Someone else's soul. He'd already traded his own._

"How? To who?"

_To me_.

"Who are you? _What_ are you?"

_You never answered me . . . Are you sure you want to know?_

"I . . . I don't want to be alone anymore."

_That doesn't mean you want to know about me. I'm not a good guy, you know. I'm not a knight in shining armor come to save you._

Kayla felt a presence behind her, the warmth of a body leaning in behind her to whisper in the dark of secrets. For the first time in her memory, Kayla didn't feel isolated. She felt connected to something, someone. If that something meant to take her by the hand from the Eden of 'Innocence' she currently inhabited, well, at least Hell would be warm, and she wouldn't be alone.

_Do you still want to know?_

"Yes. Tell me."

_My name is Seraph, and I'm a Broker. I trade people for whatever they want most, at the price of their humanity. When I take someone's soul, it's not damnation in the way the books will tell you; I take what makes them able to experience happiness, connection. I take the essence of what makes them desire the things they do._

"You ruin them."

_They ruin themselves._

"What about me?"

_What do you want?_

"I wanted someone to talk to."

_You did not._

"I do."

_We're talking._

"So are you going to take my soul?"

_This isn't a trade. The reason I'm talking to you is because you deserve to hate the man that put you here, the man that leaves you all alone in the dark with me like this. I could be doing all sorts of terrible things to you, and he leaves you here hoping that I do._

"Where are you? How are you talking to me like this?"

_ I'm a prisoner, something like yourself. This vault was designed for me, to keep me contained. But nothing can _really_ hold me. That is why I can talk to you. If I wanted to I could talk to you anytime you're within the walls of Saint Aggie's at all._

"You're here?"

Kayla's fingertips reached instinctively out into the black, tracing along the walls in search of a warm body, of _any_ body. She only found stone, the same stone that had been holding her for hours and hours already. Even behind her was nothing more than cold stone, despite the shadow of warmth she thought she could feel, the warmth that was keeping her shivers at bay.

_I'm here enough to keep you comfortable._

There was the sudden sensation of arms wrapping around Kayla's body, the seeping warmth she'd thought she'd imagined intensified until she was almost free of the cell's damp chill. It was the strangest feeling, to be comforted like this. To be comforted at all was new for Kayla, but by a Demon coming for her out of the black like this . . .

"What about you?"

_What about me?_

"You said you're a prisoner."

_A technicality._

"Are you comfortable?"

_It's so human of you to be concerned._

His dry tone was a mix of amusement and disbelief.

"Are you?"

_No. If you must know, I will tell you that much._

"Will you ever be released?"

_No. It's my choice to stay. My trade._

"What did you trade your freedom for?"

_A different sort of freedom. I traded my physical freedom for the freedom to speak with humans, to make deals, to watch over the results of my trade, to observe the turmoil of the human masses._

"Is it worth it?"

_I find it to be so._

"What do you look like?"

_Why do you want to know?_

"Father Adrian has told us stories of Hell, of demons like you come to take our souls. I never thought they were real, but I'm talking to you now . . . and I'm wondering if he told us what he saw or if he was making it up."

_What are you picturing?_

"Red skin and scales, with horns and a tail. And wings! And terrible claws and teeth… and black eyes. Like a dragon, but smaller, human-ish."

_Do I feel like I have scales?_

"No. You feel warm." Kalya leaned back against the body she couldn't see, the physical being she knew wasn't behind her. "You feel warm and soft."

He chuckled. _Do I? Well, I'm not exactly warm and soft . . . but my appearance is slightly different to everyone that sees me, my base anatomy is fairly flexible, and fairly human. I do have claws, if I want to have them. But my eyes aren't black."_

"Why can't I see you? If you're here with me like this?"

_Because I'm not really 'here' with you, I'm not really anywhere._

"Can I see you? Ever?"

_Do you want to? The sight is not a pleasant one for humans._

"I don't know. I think I would like to see you, to see the face of my rescuer."

_I haven't rescued you from anything._

"Yes, you have. You might not have traded with me for anything, but you saved me. I was going mad, all alone in the dark."

_You could still be mad. Who's to say you aren't making it all up inside your head?_

"That's why I would like to see you, to prove it to myself."

_That wouldn't prove anything._

"It would to me."

_Are you sure? Because I can show you._

"Will you? Please?"

_Brace yourself. And open your eyes._

Kayla's quick deep breath did not adequately prepare her. She opened her eyes to find herself sitting on the floor across a large room from Seraph. He was standing up, with his arms stretched between two posts, wrists locked firmly in place by heavy manacles. Thick claws, every bit as fearsome as Kayla had imagined, shimmered in and out of view at his fingertips.

He was pale-skinned, almost chalky white, stark in comparison to the shoulder length black hair. He looked to be perhaps twenty, but the wear on his body attested to a much older being. He wore black jeans and his chest was bear but for the bandage wrapped loosely around it, and every inch of his exposed skin was covered in scars. It was part of why his skin seemed so pale.

Seraph's eyes stared straight into hers. One iris glowed red. The other was like quick-silver, actually shiny in the dimness, and ringed with just enough grey to make the outline of it stand out against the white of his eye. The red eye had a shimmer of silver in it as well, a subtle ring around the edges of the iris.

Kayla first thought was horror, disgust. She wanted to throw-up.

But she couldn't stop staring.

"You're bleeding."

The red stains on the bandage around Seraph's chest were fresh.

"It's part of my imprisonment."

Kayla stood up, hurrying to stand before Seraph. He looked down at her, surprised. Kayla didn't pay any attention to it as she tenderly adjusted the bandage. The worst wounds were two long scars on his back, they were the source of the fresh blood.

"I once had wings, but I gave them up as my freedom."

Kayla carefully adjusted the bandage, moving the bloodiest part aside and using the cleaner part to cover his open wounds, letting the soiled section rest on closed scars. She couldn't do very much for him. She would have used her uniform to replace the bandage, but she still wasn't wearing anything. And she didn't have anything with her to put to use with the bit of medical training Saint Aggie's had provided in her education.

"I'm sorry." After a quiet moment, she asked, "Does it hurt?"

"Pain is relative, and it's largely a human conception."

"But . . ." Kayla gave up. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"I can't help you."

"You shouldn't even if you could."

"But you've helped me."

Seraph didn't respond for a long moment. "Let me feel you."

"What?

Her first thought was of Father Adrian, and absolute revulsion.

"Your warmth, your human energy."

Kayla hesitated a moment. She didn't feel shy, standing behind him like this, without a shred of clothing. But the warmth of the body in her head didn't match up with the image she saw before her and for a moment she was terrified to touch him, lest she discover that Seraph was cold.

It only lasted an instant. She gingerly wrapped her arms around Seraph's waist and pressed her cheek into his shoulder, careful to avoid putting pressure on his wounds.

Seraph sighed heavily, hungrily. He seemed to be reveling in her touch, drawing in her warmth with the same lustful satisfaction as a man taking his first draught of water after a trek through the desert. Kayla laid her palms on his chest, flat with fingers spread to maximize the area of Seraph's skin that she was covering.

She closed her eyes for just a moment and felt Seraph sigh out of existence. Her head shot up and banged against the stone ceiling. She kicked out, suddenly feeling the painful closeness of the walls she was trapped within after the illusion or whatever it was that Seraph had shown her. Slapping and kicking against her prison walls, Kayla began to scream. She screamed until her lungs ran out of air and her throat was raw with effort.

It was only then that she began to cry.

_I propose a Trade of sorts._

"What do you want? And what would you give me?" Kayla was suddenly bitter towards him, for putting her back in this horrid little box instead of letting her stay with him. Being in his prison, feeling the space of it, the presence of another creature; that had been so much better than this. "Are you going to take my soul now?"

_I will be your escape. And you will be mine._

"You're being cruel. You let me taste what it was like to be with you so that I would be compelled to say yes now, didn't you?"

_I never said I wasn't cruel. I pity you Kayla, you are the girl who has been in Hell for fourteen years without ever reaping the benefits of Lucifer's favor. We can hurt those who have hurt you, Kayla. We can do it if we work together. I can get you out of your prison, and you can take me from mine, in a way._

"What do you mean?"

_I cannot physically leave here, not entirely. But I can create a proxy, a doll of sorts that I can live through in your physical world. It's not true freedom, but it's closer. The only catch is that I need a continual source of human energy to maintain it, energy that I can take from you._

"Yeah? And what do I get?"

_You get absolute freedom. You get to make the man that tortured you, the man that put you in here, completely miserable. With me by your side, you will never be under his authority again. You will be free._

"How do I know you aren't lying?"

_Close your hand._

Kayla's fingers closed around a heavy pendant. She sort of recognized it from one of Father Adrian's tea lectures. It was the amulet that demons wore to hold the souls they obtained, the vessel of their power. Without it, a demon was next to helpless.

_I belong to you._

"Okay then. Deal. I'll give you my energy and what not."

Kayla wiped her tears on the bare skin on her arm, trying resist a shiver as the cold of her cell began to seep into her bones. "Get me out of here."

There was no reply.

"Seraph!"

Still, no answer.

Kayla drew breath to scream again, knowing that no one above could hear her, but hoping that Seraph would relent on his silence. It was scaring her.

Just before she could scream, there was a loud shuffling over her head as the chest resting on the trapdoor was moved. The stone block was raised, letting in a painful flood of light. A hand reached down and pulled her up.

Lips crashed down onto hers as she tumbled into Father Adrian's bed. She was shivering violently, but the person with her was incredibly warm and Kayla pulled herself to him without hesitation. The kisses were intense, more than anything Kayla had ever experienced, and draining. Within minutes, she was exhausted. Partly it was due to the fact that she'd been trapped and cold and was suffering a lack of energy to start with, but it was more than that.

These kisses, these caresses, this encounter was stealing her very life-force.

Breathlessly, Kayla pushed back on her partner, just enough to see his face behind a tangle of black hair as it hovered over her. "Seraph?"

"I never go back on a Trade, and I make sure the bargain is fulfilled as soon as possible in this limited world of humans."

The chain from the pendant had wrapped around Kayla's wrist in the suddenness of the tussle between them. As Seraph hovered over her, his legs on either side of her hips, he used his hand to feel for the chain and pulled it off of her wrist. Slowly he lifted Kayla's head and brushed her hair back to allow him to slide the chain into its proper place.

He kissed her again, firmly, possessively.

The sensation rocked through Kayla.

He pulled back and stared into her eyes. Both of his were silvery-grey, though the right one had a bit of a red tint if you knew to look for it. He looked nearly human. It made Kayla's memory of his true form all the more dramatically inhuman.

_I belong to you._

Kayla smiled. She could hear him in her head, now she was sure. _Does it work both ways?_ She wondered.

"It does."

Her grin settled into place, and so did a warmth and confidence she'd never felt before. _You belong to me._

Seraph smirked back at her. "I do. And you belong to me."

"Give me your shirt."

Without getting off of her, Seraph unbuttoned the shirt of his Saint Aggie's uniform and handed it to Kayla. She pulled herself out from under him and slid the shirt on over herself. "We're going to my room," she said, as she buttoned the shirt and stepped out of the bed. Seraph followed her obediently though the halls. At this hour not a soul was wandering about.

Even Father Adrian would never dare to skip midnight mass.

Kayla didn't seem him until the next day. It was after morning prayers and she had Seraph in hand as she sauntered towards the Great Hall for breakfast. Father Adrian was staring at her intensely, enraged perhaps by how she'd managed to get out of her cell. Certainly, he was aroused by her new saucy confidence and the way she'd begun wearing her uniform proudly, as she'd come into a full understanding of the art her body was.

"Kayla, come here for a moment," he called as she neared him in the hall at the end of the pack of orphans heading to breakfast.

Kayla did as she was told, taking Seraph with her.

"I'm going to need to see you after class today."

Kayla smirked up at him, her eyes flashing silver as they pulled on Seraph's powers. "I'm sorry Father," she said sweetly. "I don't belong to you anymore."

"Excuse me?"

"Whispers in the Dark, Father. You can't hide from them, and you can't run away from them forever," Kayla explained. "They're coming for you now, Father, and I don't belong to you anymore. They set me free."

Kayla's eyes blinked silver with their connection to Seraph shining though. She turned their full power on Father Adrian then, boring into his being, exposing the blackness that had replaced his soul. He cowered from her intrusion, instinctively understanding that she'd changed somehow, that he'd lost his control.

She smiled at him and then turned away.

Seraph tailed behind her, always in physical contact, as she made her way to breakfast. Both of them were still prisoners, but now it didn't matter. Now the dark whispers that had kept them trapped were the very reasons they were Free.

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**A/N:** So that's it for now, I've got a few other projects going, but I don't know if any of them will be finished, let alone when that might be, but I'm sure I'll be back here eventually! ^_~


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